1867.] TJie Public Health. 305 



The town council, after making haste to comply with a portion 

 of the order, at the instigation of their Health Committee denied 

 the legality of the inquiry, and declined to give the requisite 

 guarantee, lecturing the Home Secretary in a somewhat amusing 

 manner upon his course of proceeding, and saying that the Sanitary 

 Act was not intended for such an influential body of gentlemen as 

 they are. The Sanitary Association of the town, however, supple- 

 mented the "reply" of the mayor by further information on the 

 sanitary state of the town, and on the 4th of March, Mr. B. 

 Samuelson, M.P. for Banbury, asked the Home Secretary to 

 publish Mr. Taylor's report, which applies to other towns besides 

 Liverpool, and which the honourable member was asked for by 

 the Sanitary Keform League recently established at Manchester. 



Mr. Walpole spoke highly of Mr. Taylor's Beport, which is a 

 most admirable essay on the sanitary defects of Liverpool, and an 

 account of many abuses existing not alone there, but also in most 

 of our large towns, and promised to give the Beport and corre- 

 spondence his best consideration. Probably before these remarks 

 go to press, some portion, if not the whole, of the Beport will be 

 issued, and we commend it to the notice of all sincere sanitary 

 reformers. 



The Liverpool Town Council is applying to Parliament for 

 nearly a million sterling for town improvements, but so little of 

 this money is to be expended for bond fide sanitary purposes, that 

 it is to be hoped Parliament will consider well before the Bill is 

 allowed to pass; and there is no doubt that, for the future, all 

 such bills will be watched much more narrowly than has hitherto 

 been the case. 



In most cases where large sums are asked for by our boroughs 

 for so-called " improvements," it may be taken for granted that a 

 considerable proportion of the money required finds its way into 

 the pockets of persons more or less intimately connected with the 

 corporation, who have land or buildings which they wish to be rid 

 of at a remunerative price. We expect shortly to hear more of 

 these "jobs." 



A description of the state of Manchester will be found in a 

 separate article in this Number, as also some account of Mr. Torrens's 

 Artizans' and Labourers' Dwellings Bill. 



vol. rv. 



