THE SANATORY ENTERPRISE: LAND IN SIGHT. A WRITER in the
Daily News makes some not unfriendly ob- jections to our observations last week on "social cant,"—to which, by the by, he gives a more specific application than we did, in naming two popular writers. He asks- " Can the most saturnine of publicists, the most distrustful of all progress, deny that the activity Of the social regenerator has assumed some of those forms among MB in which cant finds least shelter? * a• Is not this work of sanatory regu- lation peculiarly and above all a growth of our own times? Will any one suspect Lord Ashley, or Mr. Chadwick, or Dr. Southwood Smith, or their active fellow- labourers, of being‘canters themselves, or consciously the cause of cant in others'? It appears to us rather that the cant of this time differs from previous cants, in laving more smack of reality about it."
No one will level such a suspicion at Dr. Southwood Smith or Mr. Chadwick; and yet in this very work of sanatory regulation, we fear, there is such an amount of cant as the most trusting of publicists would not deny. Cant is the very worst obstructive to the movement—that pretended sympathy which deadens the ex- ertion of all but the ardent, by seeming to make it needless. The movement is one that men professing to be intelligent, or hu- mane, or liberal, scarcely dare to oppose; but they have applauded it, and shelved it : they smile, and smile, and murder while they smile."
What are the facts? Years ago, Dr. Southwood Smith ex- pounded the appalling statement Of a yearly massacre—the slaughter of a population equal to that of a whole county, by pestilential agencies that may be prevented.Mr. Chadwick brought the machinery of the Poor-law Commission to bear upon the subject, and there were blue books. Those two men devoted their energies and abilities to the work of making. these things known and extorting remedies. Ministers were made to listen; Parliament heard speeches ; public meetings did the same; a " Health-of Towns Association" bas been organized ; there have been modicums of improvement, and some real progress is made. But how is it that we find Mr. Chadwick and Dr. Southwood Smith now proclaiming, as at the Exeter meeting, the very same things about the slaughter that we heard so long ago! How is it
i that n the last publication on the subject* we encounter a recital of the same mortal nuisances that are described in the earliest blue book How is it that Lord Lincoln's bill was not an act ; that there is still no Ministry of Public Health ; that the paltriest and filthiest nuisances still mock the power of this imperial state, and yearly carry on the "slaughter"
The things about which we have beard so much from Dr. Southwood Smith and his coadjutors are tangible enough ; their operation is obvious ; the results are most manifest Nay., in most instances, these very things that are so pestilential in their effects are noisome to the senses. If one did not know the stuff of which your average "public man" is made, one would sup- pose it enough to describe these deadly agencies, for them to be removed instanter. So it is in individual private cases. Dr. Southwood Smith is called in to a family dying of pestilential fever ; he discovers the cause in some adjacent nuisance, and tells his patients that they must fly it ; and he is obeyed. He finds a large fraction of the people dying yearly of the same nuisances collectively ; he points out the larger fact, and is heard respect- fully ; but little or nothing is done. The blue book, however, is a palpable hit—Dr. Southwood Smith possesses a genius which it would be derogatory to one's own intelligence not to appretiate-- Mr. Chadwick is a man of unanswerable matter-of-factness: your "public man" recognizes the force of all this; he is interested— at first ; he graces the platform of a public meeting—he dines, and talks of lay-stalls and other abominations after dinner ; he sits in Parliament, expanding his waistcoat in the fulness of his knowledge, and with a pompous "Hear, hear! " appropriates the credit of being able to say all which that other honourable gentle- man is saying ; and so "the debate" is over. In the mouth of such a man, the "yearly slaughter" is a cant, and a very gross cant : he converses about it to others, to display his knowledge, and to show that his party is a humane party, and proper to be in office ; but what will be sacrifice to prevent the yearly slaugh- ter, of which he talks and writes so glibly ? Not five minutes from his dinner, not the first reading of some miserable continu- ance bill, not the slightest "convenience " of the Minister.
There are three reasons why we are still discussing measures of such self-evident and paramount necessity : first, because many men whom the exigencies of party thrust into high places lack
• eufficiEnt clearness of intellect to see the necessity in its full force, secondly, because there are many who see yet lack the courage to grapple with the trouble and the interested opposition that they would encounter • and thirdly, because heretofore, with the highest cant of self-reference, they did not descry any party advan- tage to themselves in working out the desired good. There have been honourable exceptions—as in the case of Lord Normanby; but how potent must have been the vie inertia which has crippled even the official converts! There are always plenty of men to serve their country—at high salaries, or for the palpable reward of party- success ; few who pursue good for its own sake. But this subject of sanatory reform is becoming better under- stood. Public men are learning that it is a mission in which credit may be reaped, especially as the field of party successes is narrowed with the decay of party itself. A deputation from the Health of Towns Society has been assured that the present Minis- ters mean to take up the subject, and to introduce a comprehen- sive and effective measure. If so, they at least will exonerate themselves from the charge of cant.
* "Report of the Committee to the Members of the Health of Towns Associa- tion on Lord Lincoln's Sewerage, Drainage, Sce. of Towns Bill." Published by Charles Knight and Co.
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