TRANSACTIONS OF THE SECTIONS. 201 



defects and of overcrowding in the lowest class of dwellings. Nothing can effect 

 this much-needed remedy, but the extension to all tenements in towns and thickly 

 populated neighbourhoods, which are let at low weekly rents, of such legislative 

 interference as is universally admitted to have been of the greatest benefit in the 

 case of common lodging houses. "Within the limited jurisdiction of the Corporation 

 authorities in the City of London, such a power was conferred in 1851, and it is judi- 

 ciously exercised under the supervision of the Medical Officer of Health, to the great 

 benefit of the poor, and with a marked diminution in the returns of mortality, 

 which have fallen since that date from 25 to 23 in 1000. 



In the case of idl new buildings, proper drainage should be enforced by authority, 

 prior to their commencement ; the want of it is a most fruitful source of sickness, 

 and consequent expense to the public. 



In the preceding notes my aim has been to draw only such conclusions as are 

 fully supported by the facts adduced. I cannot, however, omit glancing at this 

 subject from one other point of view, and that the most important in which it can 

 be presented for consideration, its bearing on our fellow-creatures as moral and 

 accountable beings. The experience of a right rev. prelate, when formerly rector 

 of St. Giles-in-the-Fields, one of the most thickly-populated and poverty-struck 

 parishes in London, must give peculiar weight to the following words : " The 

 physical circumstances of the poor paralyse all the efforts of the clergyman, the 

 schoolmaster, the scripture reader, or the city missionary, for their spiritual or then' 



moral welfare Every effort to create a spiritual tone of feeling is counteracted by 



a set of physical circumstances which are incompatible with the exercise of common 

 morality. Talk of morality amongst people who herd, men, women and children 

 together, with no regard of age or sex, in one narrow confined apartment ! You 

 might as well talk of cleanliness in a sty, or of limpid purity in the contents of a 

 cesspool I" 



Our prisons are no longer hot beds of fever* and of moral contagion as they 

 formerly were : may it not be asked in this Association, whether, with the advance 

 of science, the reproach to which England is justly amenable on account of the 

 domiciliary state of our labouring population, ought not to be effaced ? and, whilst 

 self-interested motives might be urged on many, the divine command, " thou shalt 

 love thy neighbour as thyself," lays a serious responsibility on all who have it in 

 then - power to promote an object so indispensable to the well-being of our poorer 

 neighbours. 



MECHANICAL SCIENCE. 



The President, in opening the business of the Section, took occasion to refer 

 to the great loss Mechanical Science had sustained, since the last Meeting, in the 

 deaths of Brunei and Stephenson. He then made some brief remarks on the recent 

 progress of Mechanical Science, especially in the use of heat to produce motive 

 power. 



On the Mechanical Effects of combining Suspension Chains and Girders, and 

 the Value of the Practical Application of this System {illustrated by a Mo- 

 del). By P. W. Barlow, F.R.S. 



On Rifled Cannon. By Captain Blakeley. 

 The writer remarked, that to make an efficient rifled gun, no more was needed 

 than to copy any good small rifle in the number and shape of the grooves, degree 

 of twist, and other details, provided one difficulty was overcome, viz. that of 

 making the barrel strong enough. Taking Sir W. Armstrong's SO-pounder as a 

 standard, Capt. Blakeley gave several examples of large rifled cannon on the model 



* 



At the black assizes held in Oxford in July 1577, the gaol fever spread from the prisoners 

 to the couit, and within two days had killed the judge, the sheriff, several justices of the peace 

 most of the jury, as well as a great number of the audience, and afterwards spread amongst the 

 inhabitants of the town. 



