41 



branches, are nol [infrequently engaged by municipal bodies to study 

 particular requirements of the people, and invent means to satisfy them, 

 still, as a general rule, improvements have come in most cities, when 

 they have come at all, chiefly through the influence of individual energy, 

 interested in behalf of special mercantile or speculative enterprises, by 

 which the supineness of the elected and paid representatives of the 

 common interests of the citizens has been overborne. 



ERRONEOUS VIEW OF THE NECESSARY DISADVANTAGES OF 

 TOWN LIFE. 



What is <it" more consequence, however, not merely that we may 

 avoid injustice to our ancestors, but that we may realize the chan eg 

 which have occurred in the standard of requirement, with reference to 

 which the merits of a street system are now to be judged, is the fact 

 that when these improvements were devised, it was still pardonable to 

 take for granted that the larger the population of a town should be 

 allowed to become, the greater would be the inconvenience and dan- 

 ger to which all who ventured to live in it would necessarily he sub- 

 ject, the more they would he exposed to epidemic diseases, the feebler, 

 more sickly, and shorter their lives would he; the greater would he the 

 danger of sweeping conflagrations ; the larger the proportion of men- 

 dicants and criminals, and the more formidable, desperate and danger- 

 ous the mobs. 



EVILS OF TOWN-LIFE HAVE DIMINISHED AS TOWNS HAVE 

 GROWN LARGER. 



We now know that these assumptions were entirely fallacious, for, as 

 a matter of fact, towns have gone on increasing, until there are many 

 in Europe which are several times larger than the largest of the Middle 

 Ages, and in the largest the amount of disease is not more than half as 

 great as it formerly was ; the chance of living to old age is much more 

 than twice as great ; epidemics are less frequent, less malignant and more 

 controllable; sweeping fires are less common, less devastating and are 

 much sooner got under ; ruffians are much better held in check; mobs 

 are less frequently formed, are less dangerous, and, when they arise, are 

 suppressed more quickly and with less bloodshed; there is a smaller 

 proportion of the population given over to vice and crime and a vastly 

 larger proportion of well-educated, orderly, industrious and well-to-do 

 citizens. These things are true, in the main, not of one town alone, but 

 of every considerable town, from Turkey on the one side to China on 

 the other, and the larger each town has grown, the greater, on an aver- 

 age, has been the gain. Even in Mahomedan Cairo, chiefly through 



