The philanthropists are almost as dangerous to freedom as the
Bonapartists. Dr. Lankester, in his paper on sanitary reform read before the Social Science Association, evidently longs for precautions as strict as the Levitical rules against leprosy, which, be it remembered, did not extirpate the disease ; and Mr. Edwin. Chadwickwants a new army of State officials. A physician paid by the State ought, he says, to inquire minutely not only into the- fact of death, but into the cause of death, before the body is com- mitted to the grave. Dr. Lankester's plans would involve us in rules of health so oppressive that men would commit suicide to avoid them, while Mr. Chadwick's would make it a criminal offence to be the relative of a deceased person. Imagine the kind of in- tellect which suggests that the first hours of grief for the death of a relative shall be filled up by the questions of a State official, whose object is to discover whether you may not have poisoned your father, or pistolled your wife, or perhaps eaten your baby!
