152 REPORT — 1856. 



gveat changes are now in rapid progress ; and the obstacles to an amended distribution 

 of the hihabitants are fast disappearing. 



3. During the fii-st half of tliis century, a much larger proportion of the population 

 aggregated in towns ; but now a reflux of population from crowded centres is again 

 taking place. Suburban inhabited areas are accordingly increasing in a greater ratio 

 than the numbers of town residents. 



4. Past legislation has limited political privileges to crowded populations within 

 narrow boundaries, and has thus fostered the injurious condensation of the masses. 

 It is important to reverse this policy, and to treat the whole population on equal 

 terms. 



5. The old divisions of the country, various and conflicting, are inapplicable to the 

 progressive extension of inhabited areas. Changes have accordingly been found 

 necessary in parochial and municipal boundaries, which cannot therefore be considered 

 of a settled or permanent nature. 



G. The recent division of the country into poor-law Unions was based on the paro- 

 chial system, and like it, is irreconcileable with municipal boundaries. Unions were 

 not formed scientifically ; and they often manifest, in their form and contents, singular 

 inattention to physical geography and sanitary considerations. 



7. The registration districts, and (now) the census arrangements, are based on the 

 poor-law division, and the returns of population, births, deaths, and marriages, have 

 made the defects of that division more obvious, while an erroneous distribution of the 

 people has, in turn, afiected the compilation of vital and sanitary statistics, so that 

 these returns do not afford, to the extent which they might, the means for correct 

 inferences respecting the physical condition and social progress of distinct communities, 

 in special circumstances, natural or artificial. 



For this, among other valid reasons, it is unsafe to adopt the rate of mortality in 

 any union or registration district, as a test of the actual salubrity, either of its principal 

 town or of its more scattered population. 



8. Until our national records of vital statistics are more complete (including facts 

 now omitted) and compiled from a more scientific classification of the people, we can 

 arrive at no satisfactory conclusions respecting the life, the health, the social state, 

 the education, the morals and the habits of those who inhabit difl^erent places ; we are 

 unable to demonstrate the causes of social evils, and therefore we cannot fairly call 

 upon the legislature to inaugurate the required reforms. 



9. Another obstacle to a correct territorial division for statistical objects, is the co- 

 existence of several kinds of local administrative bodies, exercising conflicting functions, 

 within difierent areas of jurisdiction. Various administrative duties, of a sanitary or 

 reformatory nature, are performed in most towns by two rival bodies (a Board of 

 Guardians and a Town Council or Local Board of Health) managing districts which 

 differ widely in extent ; the vital statistics being collected under the authority of that 

 local board which has been the most distrusted as regards sanitary management. 



10. The practical evils of limited and isolated jurisdictions, in the execution of 

 measures of public health, are manj' and serious, — evils to the inhabitants included, 

 and evils to those excluded. 



11. It is of paramount importance to extend sanitary inspection and regulation to 

 suburban and rural districts. The outskirts of towns are more and more peopled by 

 the humbler classes of society ; and it is therefore increasingly necessary to promote 

 a better description of dwellings for working people out of towns, either near railway 

 stations, or within accessible distance of their places of labour. 



12. Measures of public health should be extended to the whole population of the 

 kingdom, without reference to any district-rate of mortality. It is absui'd to defer 

 the application of preventive measures, until the fatal result of neglect, namely, a high 

 proportion of deaths, — the precise ratio of which different parties cannot agree upon, 

 — be detected in any place. 



13. No system of territorial division, for statistical purposes and for local self-govern- 

 ment, deserves consideration, which would not secure for every portion of the country, 

 whether town or rural parish, the superintendence of a uniform administi-ative ma- 

 chinery, competent to collect all returns relating to the numbers, the vital force (ages 

 of the living), the mortality, the diseases, and the reproduction ofc he population, — 

 as well as to carry into effect all sanitary precautions. 



14. A public registration of diseases should have special regard to their causation, 



