In the inaugural address delivered by Lord Basing, better known
as Mr. Sclater-Booth, to the Congress of the Sanitary Institute of Great Britain, it is claimed that the fact that since the year 1870 the annual death-rate has decreased by one- seventh, is wholly due to sanitary legislation. We doubt the accuracy of this contention. Doubtless increased atten- tion to public sanitation has done much; but it would be absurd to leave out of eight the still greater muse for the diminution in the death-rate, the fact that in no previous seventeen years in our history has food been so cheap, and the mass of the popula- tion so well off. Physicians, too, tell us that improved methods of rearing very young children are affecting statistics, as is also the visible decrease in the habit of excessive drinking. Lord Basing notices the growing tendency "to look to Government for help, for direction, and for pecuniary resource in the hour of difficulty and danger; and, moreover, to hold the Government responsible for all calamities, local as well as Imperial;" but without expressing any decided opinion on this tendency, proceeds to mention nineteen improvements (almost all of which give new powers to the ubiquitous Inspector) which might be made in the Public Health Act. No doubt it is good to be clean, but is there not a point where inspection terminates self- help P
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