444 [Assembly 



causes of defeat have been explained by the vanquished', the state of 

 the sick list has been made the subject of inquiry. The historian, 

 too, in his account of campaigns, recognizes heahh and sickness as 

 among the grand causes of success or disaster. But the manly health 

 and vigor of a people engaged in the arts of peace — as among the 

 most essential items in a nation's valuation, as a capital ready for 

 profitable investment, in any industrial enterprise, and therefore as a 

 prolific source of public revenue, as well as of private wealth, have 

 been overlooked by statesmen and law-givers, in all their schemes for 

 national aggrandizement. 



" The pecuniary merits of this subject may be presented under 

 another aspect. Children at different ages, and under different cir- 

 cumstances, may be regarded as representing investments of different 

 sums of money. These investments consist in the amount which has 

 been expended for their nursing, rearing, clothes, board, educatioc, 

 and so forth, and in the value of the time of others which has been 

 appropriated to them. Though differing exceedingly in regard to 

 different persons, yet in this country, the aggregate expense with its 

 accruing interest, of the great majority at the age of twenty or 

 twenty-one years, can hardly be estimated at less than from five hun- 

 dred to a thousand dollars, after deducting the value of all the ser- 

 vices performed. Now if half mankind die by the time they arrive 

 at this age, or before it, and half these come to their untimely end 

 through the ignorance of their parents or themselves, (and I may 

 add through the inattention of government to their condition,) what 

 an amazing price does our ignorance (and inattention) cost us? 

 With what reckless prodigality do we continue to cherish it! What 

 spendthrifts we are, not only of the purest source of affection and 

 domestic happiness, but of wealth!" 



Such being the condition of a great part of the population of this 

 city, such the physical, and such the moral evils, which flow in a 

 continually deepening and widening stream of misery, pollution and 

 death, it remains for me now to point out, in conclusion of the plan 

 with which I commenced this paper, the means by which the sources 

 of the current may be dried up. 



To secure the community against invasion by disease from abroad, 

 we have a well organised and efficient "Cordon Sanitaire." This 

 consists of the health officer, residing at the Quarantine station, and 

 the resident physician and health commissioner, residing in the city. 

 These, together with a board known as health commissioners, and in 



