1018 PROCEEDINGS OF SECTION I. 
we must not hesitate, even at the expense of repetition, to restate 
the principles of our science. We all know that there is little 
danger of repeating them any too often in the hearing of the 
public. Those, therefore, of my audience, who are more intimately 
acquainted with hygiene and sanitation than I am, will bear in 
charity and patience the scientific shortcomings of my address. 
The task I have set myself is practically an appeal to my fellow 
legislators of these colonies, and however Utopian the effort may 
seem to some, this can be said for it, that it is neither illegitimate 
nor out of season. I propose to limit myself to the consideration 
of the three following general propositions :— 
1. How far public hygiene claims attention from our 
legislators. 
to 
. What Australia has on general lines accomplished in the 
direction of public hygiene and sanitation. 
What remains to be done, and the lines on which immediate 
legislation should run. 
ae) 
SECTION I. 
The recent. unique historical event, a Diamond Jubilee of the 
reigning Sovereign of the British Empire, has thrown many 
scientists and philanthr opists into a somewhat retrospective mood, 
and we have been favoured with excellent and highly- interesting 
monographs, detailing the progress of science and art, and the 
development of social movements duri ing the last sixty years. 
None of these have been more inter esting, and none have shown 
greater advances to have taken place than those relating to public 
hygiene.- Its triumphs have been more than ordinarily manifest, 
and these have only been made visible as the theoretical conclu- 
sions on which it is based have become more completely embodied 
in legislation. Public hygiene really can have no _ practical 
existence without enactment. It may seem to minds trained to 
methodical reasoning an easy process to utilise the conclusions of 
a branch of science so experimental as that upon which public 
hygiene rests, and to secure their materialisation, so to speak, in 
law. But when it is remembered that these conclusions of science 
must filter through minds, whose strong point is not the calm 
exercise of the reasoning faculty, the barrier to secur ing an Act 
of Parliament is sulbstanional and the labour involved in overcoming 
it hard, and oftentimes disappointing. 
But legislation has to be obtained. It is said, public opinion 
must be followed, but it is equally true that it must be created. 
It is the work of lesen ledge to create, and that is the aim of this 
Association to-day. In seeking legislation, the main factor after 
