The discussion in the House of Lords on Thursday night
with respect to these workhouse-hospital horrors was anything but satisfactory. Lord Devon was certainly apologetic, and in moving for returns of some of Dr. Edward Smith's reports said he wanted more power for the Poor Law Board than it at present has. But he did not seem at all aware how little it has used the power actually at its disposal, or how bitterly it is reproached by local Boards of Guardians with fettering them in their-reforms, instead of spurring them on. Moreover, some of the Lords took a tone which seemed almost intended to justify these outrages on all -decency as well as humanity,—Lord Houghton particularly insisting exclusively on the danger of increasing expenditure, lest thereby the pressure of poor-rates on the lowest class of house- holders should increase pauperism more than the rates voted will relieve it. That may be a good enough objection to the mode of doing it by mere increase of the rates; it is no proof that we must not find a mode of treating pauper-hospital patients at least as well as our criminal-hospital patients, which is a good deal more than we do at present. Lord Houghton expressed great horror -of resorting to the old bad system, when the poorhouse was the resource "for all sorts of improvidence." That might be very -dangerous if we were asking new comforts for able-bodied per- sons, and not for the sick, the idiotic, and the helpless. But how it can be dangerous to let helpless old men and women have basins to wash in instead of the most disgusting utensils, or to provide proper medicines for fever patients without mulcting the infirmary surgeon, does not very clearly appear to us. People will not, in the ordinary way, contract typhus, or even typhoid, .or become idiotic, in order to enjoy the delights of a pauper infirmary.
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