302 The Public Health. [April, 



The department of Public Health of the Social Science Asso- 

 ciation are about to submit to the President of the Privy Council 

 a memorial on the Public Health Laws, pointing out their diversity 

 and complexity, and consequent feebleness and inactivity. In the 

 conclusion of their memorial to the Government they state — 



" 1. That the laws of public health require to be revised and 

 consolidated with plain and specific enactments on all sanitary 

 matters. 



" 2. That permissive enactments are generally taken to be per- 

 missions not to act, and that the most useful provisions should be 

 made peremptory. 



" 3. That the very common deficiency in the administration of 

 the health laws by the local authorities is due to the absence of a 

 central power, which could be appealed to without reference to the 

 courts of law, and could by means of the law compel the local 

 authorities to do their duty.'" 



The permissive character of all our sanitary legislation has long 

 been seen to be the bane of our national existence and the source of 

 a mortality in all our large towns at once alarming and disgraceful. 

 The necessity of bringing the force of public opinion, if not the 

 power of the state, to bear upon our local authorities, who per- 

 sistently refuse to act upon the powers given them, has led to the 

 formation of a Sanitary Reform League. This body, which held its 

 first meeting at Manchester in February last, already numbers 

 amongst its members many gentlemen in London, Manchester, 

 Liverpool, Leeds, and other towns. It is intended shortly to hold 

 a conference in London, and it is hoped that a body of earnest 

 workers for the welfare of their country will thus be brought 

 together, who will compel an unwilling legislature, and the yet 

 more unwilling vestries of this country, to adopt those measures 

 which are every day becoming more pressingly necessary for the 

 saving of the lives of the people of this country. 



As a proof of the necessity of active measures being taken at 

 once, we would refer to a paper in the ' Leeds Mercury : of the 

 23rd of February last, on the Fever Haunts of Leeds. Without 

 following the author of this paper from court to court, from one 

 den of filth to another, we knew that such things were taking 

 place. It may be very well for the pious church and chapel-going 

 and missionary-society subscribing people of Leeds to say they had 

 no idea such abominations existed. For years Leeds has had its 

 tell-tale, and those who are at a distance have had their eyes upon 

 it. That tell-tale is the bill of mortality, and we find by it that 

 month after month and year after year, and long before its awful mor- 

 tality attracted the attention of Government, that Leeds was a nest 

 of dirt and filth and neglect. The details of Dr. Hunter's Report, 

 in January, 1866, were so terrible — so unutterably disgusting, that 



