and would have saved millions of people from the misery of poverty 

 and disease. 



Although in a very few years after the rebuilding of the city, its 

 commerce advanced so much as to greatly aggravate the inconveniencies 

 under which street communication had been previously carried on, the 

 difficulties were allowed to grow greater and greater for fully a century 

 more before anything was done calculated to essentially alleviate them. 

 They seem to have been fully realized and to have been constantly de- 

 plored, nor were efforts of a certain kind wanting to remedy them: the 

 direction of these efforts, however, shows how strongly a traditional 

 standard of street convenience yet confused the judgment even of the 

 most advanced. A town being still thought of as a collection of 

 buildings all placed as closely as possible to one centre was also re- 

 garded as a place of necessarily inconvenient confinement, and there- 

 fore, of crowding, hustling and turbulence. An enlargement of the 

 population of a town could only aggravate all the special troubles 

 and dangers to which those living in it were subject, add to the num- 

 ber of its idle, thriftless, criminal and dangerous classes, and invite 

 disease, disorder and treasonable tumults. As, therefore, to amplify 

 the street arrangements or otherwise enlarge the public accommoda- 

 tions for trade or residence, would be to increase its attractions, the 

 true policy was generally assumed to be in the other direction. In 

 London, not only its own Corporation followed this policy, but Parlia- 

 ment and the Sovereign systematically did the same. 



Once, for instance, a proclamation was issued, to forbid under heavy 

 penalties the erection of any houses, except such as should be suitable 

 for the residence of the gentry, within three miles of the town ; another 

 followed which interdicted householders from enlarging the accommo- 

 dations for strangers within the town ; another enjoined all persons 

 who had houses in the country to quit the town within three weeks, 

 while constant eftbrts were made to ship off those who had none to 

 Ireland, Virginia, or Jamaica. 



In spite of all, new houses were built on the sides of the old country 

 roads, the suburban villages grew larger and larger till at length they 

 were all one town with London and the population became twice as 

 great and the commerce much more than twice as great as at the time 

 of the great fire. Even when at last plans of real improvement began 

 to be entertained it was no thought of resisting the increase of disease, 

 pauperism and crime, by other means than fencing it out, that produced 

 the change, but mainly the intolerable hindrance to commerce of the old 

 fashioned arrangements. Though some refused to see it and still pro- 

 tested against the plans of improvement as wholly unnecessary, hazard- 

 ous, reckless, and extravagant, and denounced those who urged them, as 





