THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S REPORT.
Da Registrar-General is a strange power amongst us. He pre- sides admirably over a modern but most useful institution, which enables us to cast up the grand account of life and death in our population' and, dwelling in his household, he has a genius who pisf kes him to make large utterances on the causes of life and death ; insomuch that if we would only have the wisdom to carry out the counsel which flows from his lips—that is to say, is pub- lished by his department—we should render the whole kingdom happier, stronger, more obedient to the rules of the creation, and in every respect better for itself and for the mankind coming after. Now, in the last quarterly account of the Registrar- General it would appear, at once, that we are improving in our ways and degenerating. Strange anomaly, and yet most true ! Upon the whole, the rate of mortality in the great towns, in the unhealthy centres, has decreased during the century ; but, again, the population most subjected to unhealthy influences is increas- ing. The direct inference is, that while we have fewer deaths we have a larger amount of diminished life. It may be said that there is a larger infusion of death mingled with the life of the increasing half of our population—the town half. Of 8,250,000 living in rather close proximity to each other, the annual mor- tality is at the rate of nearly 25 in a thousand, while among 9,700,000, in small towns and villages with a sparse population, the rate of mortality is not 20 in a thousand. But even in the country districts the rate of mortality is 3 in the thousand, in the town districts 8 in the thousand, above the rate which rules in comparatively healthy districts. In the quarter, there have been 27,355 deaths produced by poisons of various kinds engen- dered in the atmosphere, in the water, in the defect of air or light ; and these 27,355 deaths the Registrar-General pronounces to be "unnatural deaths." The grand causes are impurities of dwellings, impurities of streets and gullies, impurities of the rivers—in London of the Thames. It is remarkable, that as the impurity of the Thames has increased the health of the metropolis has improved : why ? Because, argues the Registrar-General, the indirect process of poisoning the river is not so bad as keeping the poison at home.
Now, after all his wisdom, and it is great, the Registrar- General is an advocate. He is an advocate of the ordinary man- ner of drainage and is manifestly opposed to any change which should purify the Thames by reversing the order of purification and carrying away the refuse in detail from each house. He begs the question against any improved plan of that kind, and in so far as he prejudges a case not yet thoroughly examined, we hold him to be in strict reason out of court. He writes with great power and eloquence, and produces a corresponding impression. The Times is deeply impressed, and lends to the cause that elo- quence which is its own and which will carry the conviction of the Registrar-General home to many minds that his own language would not so well reach. There is a man-of-the-world style in the Times, which, without lowering the subject-matter or the argument, is admirably suited to the market and to "society," which always suspects anything that approaches poetry, even when it comes in the form of a blue-book. This is curious, for truth is always the raw material of poetry ; and poetry which is just is always true. But we must take society as we find it, and the Times certainly can speak to it in its own dialect with a very peculiar effect. The didactic epie of the Registrar-General is translated into a drama of daily life. The Times paints the de- generate races which people our populous quarters—" Shore- ditch, Bethnal Green, the Borough, Lambeth, all the river-side, Clerkenwell, Grays Inn Lane, and those numerous smaller dis- tricts for which the working-classes for one reason or other have obtained inalienable possession." Here is the contrast to "the John Bull of story." Describe one and you describe nearly all, for man is like man, woman like woman, child like child"—
" As strangers can hardly tell two or three sisters from one another, you shall see that all the people before you are of one family. The woman who steps out of a tripeshop with something under her shawl is the merest double of that other who has made a very small purchase at the grocer's. To say that they are pale, or thin, or plain, means nothing. That may be said of many women who are happy, wise, and good, and who, we hope, will live long. But see the sunk eyes, the sharp corners of their faces, and the sort of wreck of expression, as if love and smiles and hope had gone. Some passion indeed there is which quickens them, and no doubt sometimes fires them. Their movements are hasty ; light indeed is the weight they carry, but for the weight of cares • and something between pertness and petulance assures us they still maintain a fight with the adverse circumstances which Will one day overwhelm them. See the mysterious holes from which they emerge, as ants crowd in and out their underground courts and alleys. See their children playing over a gullyhole, and looking as if they had come out of it." . . . . "Divest the crowd of everything that maybe considered pecu- liar and accidental. Take the average, or rather the whole, without excep- tions; and reflect that these are the children that are to be our future men and women,—these before us are the men and women that are to give us more children, to breed them, to teach them and train them, and make them men and women. Shocking as it may seem, a plague once in twenty years [teems but a light evil to so low a condition of humanity."
Air makes race, says the Times. We have sunk to a low rate of mortality, yet "there is no insurmountable reason why the air of London should not be as pure almost as sweet as that of Salis- bury Plain." Most true, and if it were made so, that pale lean, sPiritless, abject, unsympathising and uncared-for population would be redeemed. But not simply because the drainage of London would be improved, its dwellings rendered more spacious, its streets broader, its air purer, its whole face more lightsome. This is the mistake. "There is nothing like leather "—nothing, With some folks, like drainage ; and bad drainage being one of the direct causes of the deadly life of our great towns, it is assumed that good. drainage would constitute the redemption of mankind. To construct a drain is a short cut to that redemp- tion; a doctrine which would. almost make the great subterranean works of Rome equivalent to Christianity.
There are other causes beside bad drainage at work to produce these hideous effects—ignorance, moral depravity, industrial de- pression, every predisposing cause of that strumous life which has strumous progeny. Now there is no doubt that a better economy would render the whole of that population more productive in its industry, more efficient in all the walks of life, more conducive to the wealth of the community and of individuals. If capital sunk freely on vast and distant objects—of civilizing India, or open- ing the Chinese empire—can be expected to realize returns ' it will not fail when it is required to purify the air Englishmen breathe at home." Certainly not ; but, your capitalist looks to have his returns begin at least within some few years. There are many applications of capital which would render our country more happy and wealthy if the amount could be sunk, forgotten for a generation and allowed to make its returns to our children ; but the capitalist, at present, for want of better information is governed exclusively by the law of "supply and demand," which always means present- demand and prompt supply. Indeed for any purpose of combined enterprise, society just now believes in no other law ; though society in its studies, its thoughts, its af- fections, is exposing the narrowness and insufficiency of that law every day of its life. Hence its parrot cry, with a cruel literality of meaning, "Aide toi! " Hence the reliance on "free trade " when no trade is free, but is trammelled by the most artificial and injurious circumstances that could have been brought to- gether IR the anarchy of half government. Thus it is that mil- lions of our fellow-subjects are herded together without any kind of marshaling; that the power of establishing or maintaining a " nuisance " .recognized as a "right," merchantable and pro- tected by the law ; and thus it is that, in this Christian land, men responsible for ruling the country, pass through the quarters described by the Times, where humanity seems to have come out of the gully-holes over which it swarms, and do not care ! It may, indeed, be said with profound truth, that the air of London could be made "as pure and sweet as that of Salisbury Plain"— quite as pure, perhaps even sweeter ; and if it were so made, un- doubtedly the race would be restored to its full health and life; but in the process some other things would be mended besides our drains.
Previous page
