The Social Science Congress was opened on Wednesday with , a
speech by Sir R. Temple, which is in itself a splendid example -of the first of Indian difficulties. Everything in India is on too -vast a scale,—classes are nations, cesspools are great ravines -filled with the accumulation of ages, drainage covers spaces with -which only Governments can deal. Sir R. Temple's address has just this defect. He evidently intended to begin with a list -of the work to be done, but such is the multitude of objects to be sought that the list swamped the address, and is almost the whole -of it. The work to be attacked would make a philanthropic Stephenson gasp, and for ourselves, we disbelieve in its ever -being done, except through mental training. We may teach all Indians sanitary principles, and so improve the health of a -continent ; but to cleanse the ceaspools of two hundred millions is beyond the power of any Government whatever, much less a foreign one. It is not only the number, but the depth of the cesspools. Sir Richard Temple treats the idea of sanitation having produced typhoid as a prejudice, but it is undoubtedly -true. So it would in London, if it were necessary to begin by -cleaning out a dozen Regent Canals, choked to a depth of twenty feet with the filth of centuries.
Previous page
