1831.] The Board of Health, a7id the Ckolera?y 475 



not begin too soon. There are miserable spots in every great town in 

 England — even in cleanly England ; where cleanliness never enters ; 

 spots of beggary, foulness, vice, and promiscuous and wretched living, 

 from one end of the year to the other. Those haunts of pestilence 

 ought to be instantly examined and cleaned out, or utterly destroyed. 

 In London itself, every suburb has its peculiar haunt of disease. What 

 must be the condition of St. Giles's, of the outskirts of Westminster, of 

 SafFron-hill, of Wapping, of Whitechapel, of Spitalfields, if contagion 

 come .'' There is not one of those, nor of a dozen others, in which 

 there is not material, in filth, drunkenness, poverty, and promiscuous 

 vice, for the food of a national pestilence. Let the local authorities be 

 set to work without delay, and a general inquiry into the state of these 

 districts, and the mode of clearing them out, take place. But the sys- 

 tem of English life has even its peculiar liabilities to the effects of con- 

 tagion. 



A large part of our population is gathered into great masses. We 

 have manufactories, with hundreds of people compressed together in the 

 same heated atmosphere and dangerous contact. Our workhouses con- 

 tain crowds, equally the food of contagion. Independently of those, 

 our jails are continually crowded — a natural result of the temptations of 

 a country, where trade and opulence stimulate men to the commission 

 of crimes that seldom come in the way of the people of merely agricul- 

 tural countries. 



Some curious statements to this effect have been produced by M. 

 Ducpetiaux, and other foreign economists. It is asserted that a fifteenth 

 of our whole female population is subsisting by vice. This is, of course, 

 a calculation taken from the commercial and manufacturing districts :— . 

 " One-fifteenth have no means of support but by robbery, swindling, 

 pickpocketing, and every species of crime. Five-fifteenths of the people 

 are what is denominated poor, living from hand to mouth, and daily, 

 nay, hourly, sinking into heartless beggary !" A comparison between a 

 few foreign countries and Great Britain further demonstrates the effects 

 of poverty and ignorance on the great mass of the population. In North 

 America pauperism is almost unknown, and one-fourth of the people are 

 being educated ; premeditated murder is alone capital— imprisonment 

 for debt has in several states been abolished, and crimes, particularly of 

 enormity, are exceedingly rare. The Dutch, who possess a competency, 

 and are generally educated, are comparatively free from grave offences. 

 France affords a remarkable illustration. M. Ducpetiaux has divided it 

 into northern and southern, \he former being richer and more enlightened 

 than the latter ; their relative condition is as follow : 



Population. Offences against the person. 



Northern France .... 14,000,000— In 1825, 726. . In 1826, 714 



Southern France 18,000,000— Ditto, 1 ,340 . . ditto, 1, 1 93 



Proportion of} Northern France in 1825, 238 

 ]\Iurders. \ Southern France in ditto, 593 



The United Kingdom affords us a nearer illustration : — 



Scotland. England. Ireland. 

 Instruction of the people ... 1 in 1 1 . . 1 in 20. . 1 in 35 

 Criminals among the people . 1 in 5,093 . . 1 in 920. . 1 in 468 



. The economists pronounce that this excess of crime results from our 

 severity of prison punishment, &c. : but the economists always blunder 



