The Social Science Congress is this year held at Manchester,
and its President, the Bishop, made Manchester the subject of his address. The total effect of his description is a little depressing. Ho shows that good arrangements have been made for a supply of water, that the sewage system is nearly complete, and that "laudable efforts" are made to suppress smoke ; while the means of education for the young leave only a few high schools to be desired, a free library is both established and used, and the kindly Elberfeld system of poor relief is to be energetically tried. But he shows also that the population still increases, that the workmen dwell in what are virtually separate cities, with no resi- dents possessed of leisure or moans, and that these cities are composed of rotten houses, built thinly of poor bricks and bad mortar, and from the absence of any air-space between the floor and the ground, loaded with moisture. The cure of this evil, which now prevails in all cities, seems impos- sible, unless Englishmen abandon their habit of living in separate houses. Good houses twenty feet high cannot be built of brick at the price which workmen can reasonably afford to pay, and as the cities grow, building tends always to be- come worse. The success of a great city is in fact the cause of its own uninhabitableness. The Bishop, moreover, pointed out strongly the dreariness which is the distinguishing feature of English city life, the want of amusement and of the lighter interests, and the consequent desire for drink,—always an evidence, though Dr. Fraser did not say so, of a latent desire to escape from the realities around the drinker.
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