394 [Assembly 



When individuals of the pauper class are ill, their entire support, 

 and perchance that of the whole family, falls upon the community. 

 From a low state of general health, whether in an individual or in 

 numbers, proceed diminished energy of body and mind, and a viti- 

 ated moral perception, the frequent precursor of habits and deeds, 

 which give employment to the officers of police, and the ministers 

 of justice. 



These, among other considerations, together with the recent ex- 

 pression by the chief magistrate of the city of his interest in the 

 sanitary condition of his constituency, by the recommendation to the 

 Common Council of a measure of no ordinary importance to their 

 welfare and comfort,* induce me to urge attention to a measure of 

 improvement which has long impressed my mind, as one, above all 

 others, demanding the action of the City Government. 



When it was my pleasure, as it was my duty, in 1842 and '43, 

 to devote my small energies to the sanitary improvement of my 

 native city, stimulated by the consciousness of being engaged in a 

 work heretofore untried in any systematic form, and promising results 

 of the highest and most enduring interests to ray fellow citizens, I 

 seized the occasion to recommend to the Common Council the adoption 

 of a rneasure of Health Police, which I thought of serious necessity. 

 It was the last effort I was enabled to make upon the subject, before 

 I was again consigned to the private ranks by removal from office. 

 I then hoped to see the small beginning I had made, grow into 

 shape and usefulness under the fostering hands of whoever might be 

 my successors. But, in common with all who had the subject so 

 much at heart, I have been disappointed j for not only was it un- 

 touched, but the seeds which I had planted were neglected, and 

 suffered to rot in the ground. Another political revolution brought 

 with it the hope, strengthened by loud professions of municipal 

 reform, that at last the day was certain and at hand, when this subject 

 would be no longer allowed to slumber, but would be regarded as 

 one of the most urgent, and among the first, of the objects of atten- 

 tion by the new Common Council. The expectations of the public 

 could not be mistaken; but an erroneous appreciation, or an entire 

 misconception, in some quarter, of the duties and requisite qualifica- 

 tions of an officer of health, has deferred the hopes entertained of the 

 further prosecution of this interesting, and vitally important, sanitary 

 reform. 



*Publie baths. 



