'A MAD WORLD, MY MASTERS."*

HE cholera, as was to be expected, has reappeared in England again; and England, as was to be expected, has taken no sufficient steps towards meeting it; so that if, as seems but too probable, the plague should spread next summer, we may count with tolerable certainty upon a loss of some ten thousand lives.

That ten thousand, or one thousand, innocent people should die, of whom most, if not all, might be saved alive, would seem at first sight a matter serious enough for the attention of 'philanthropists.' Those who abhor the practice of hanging one man would, one fancies, abhor equally that of poisoning many; and would protest as earnestly against the painful capital punishment of diarrhoea as against the painless one of hempen rope. Those who demand mercy for the Sepoy, and immunity for the Coolie women of Delhi, unsexed by their own brutal and shameless cruelty, would, one fancies, demand mercy also for the British workman, and immunity for his wife and family. One is therefore somewhat startled at finding that the British nation reserves to itself, though it forbids to its armies, the right of putting to death unarmed and unoffending men, women, and children.

After further consideration, however, one finds that there are, as usual, two sides to the question. One is bound, indeed, to believe, even before proof, that there are two sides. It cannot be without good and suffi

*FRASER'S MAGAZINE, NO. CCCXXXVII.

cient reason that the British public remains all but indifferent to sanitary reform; that though the science of epidemics, as a science, has been before the world for more than twenty years, nobody believes in it enough to act upon it, save some few dozen of fanatics, some of whom have (it cannot be denied) a direct ресиniary interest in disturbing what they choose to term the poison-manufactories of free and independent Britons.

Yes; we should surely respect the exprest will and conviction of the most practical of nations, arrived at after the experience of three choleras, stretching over a whole generation. Public opinion has declared against the necessity of sanitary reform: and is not public opinion known to be, in these last days, the Ithuriel's spear which is to unmask and destroy all the follies, superstitions, and cruelties of the universe? The immense majority of the British nation will neither cleanse themselves nor let others cleanse them: and are we not governed by majorities? Are not majorities, confessedly, always in the right, even when smallest, and a show of hands a surer test of truth than any amount of wisdom, learning, or virtue? How much more, then, when a whole free people is arrayed, in the calm magnificence of self-confident conservatism, against a few innovating and perhaps sceptical philosophasters? Then surely, if ever, vox populi is vox cœli.

And, in fact, when we come to examine the first and commonest objection against sanitary reformers, we find it perfectly correct. They are said to be theorists, dreamers of the study, who are ignorant of human nature; and who in their materialist optimism, have forgotten the existence of moral evil till they almost fancy at times that they can set the world right simply by righting its lowest material arrangements. The complaint is perfectly true. They have been ignorant of human nature; they have forgotten the existence of

moral evil; and if any religious periodical should com. plain of their denying original sin, they can only answer that they did in past years fall into that folly, but that subsequent experience has utterly convinced them of the truth of the doctrine.

For, misled by this ignorance of human nature, they expected help, from time to time, from various classes of the community, from whom no help (as they ought to have known at first) is to be gotten. Some, as a fact, expected the assistance of the clergy, and especially of the preachers of those denominations who believe that every human being, by the mere fact of his birth into this world, is destined to endless torture after death, unless the preacher can find an opportunity to deliver him therefrom before he dies. They supposed that to such preachers the mortal lives of men would be inexpressibly precious; that any science which held out a prospect of retarding death in the case of lost millions' would be hailed as a heavenly boon, and would be carried out with the fervour of men who felt that for the soul's sake no exertion was too great in behalf of the body.

A little more reflection would have quashed their vain hope. They would have recollected that each of these preachers was already connected with a congregation; that he had already a hold on them, and they on him; that he was bound to provide for their spiritual wants before going forth to seek for fresh objects of his ministry. They would have recollected that on the old principle (and a very sound one), of a bird in the hand being worth two in the bush, the minister of a congregation would feel it his duty, as well as his interest, not to defraud his flock of his labours by spending valuable time on a secular subject like sanitary reform, in the hope of possibly preserving a few human beings,

whose souls he might hereafter (and that again would be merely a possibility) benefit.

They would have recollected, again, that these congregations are almost exclusively composed of those classes who have little or nothing to fear from epidemics, and (what is even more important) who would have to bear the expenses of sanitary improvements. But so sanguine, so reckless of human conditions had their theories made them, that they actually expected that parish rectors, already burdened with over-work and vestry quarrels-nay, even that preachers who got their bread by pew-rents, and whose life-long struggle was, therefore, to keep those pews filled, and those renters in good humour-should astound the respectable house-owners and rate-payers who sat beneath them by the appalling words, 'You, and not the visitation of God, are the cause of epidemics; and of you, now that you are once fairly warned of your responsibility, will your brothers' blood be required.' Conceive Sanitary Reformers expecting this of ministers,' let their denomination be what it might-many of the poor men, too, with a wife and seven children! Truly has it been said, that nothing is so cruel as the unreasonableness of a fanatic.

They forgot, too, that sanitary science, like geology, must be at first sight suspect' in the eyes of the priests of all denominations, at least till they shall have arrived at a much higher degree of culture than they now possess.

Like geology, it interferes with that Deus e machinâ theory of human affairs which has been in all ages the stronghold of priestcraft. That the Deity is normally absent, and not present; that He works on the world by interference, and not by continuous laws; that it is the privilege of the priesthood to assign causes for these

VOL. I.

1

'judgments' and 'visitations' of the Almighty, and to tell mankind why He is angry with them, and has broken the laws of nature to punish them ;—this, in every age, has seemed to the majority of priests a doctrine to be defended at all hazards; for without it, so they hold, their occupation were gone at once.* No wonder, then, if they view with jealousy a set of laymen attributing these 'judgments' to purely chemical laws, and to misdoings and ignorance which have as yet no place in the ecclesiastical catalogue of sins. True, it may be that the Sanitary Reformers are right: but they had rather not think so. And it is very easy not to think so. They only have to ignore, to avoid examining the facts. Their canon of utility is a peculiar one; and with facts which do not come under that canon they have no concern. It may be true, for instance, that the eighteenth century, which to the clergy is a period of scepticism, darkness, and spiritual death, is the very century which saw more done for science, for civilization, for agriculture, for manufacture, for the prolongation and support of human life, than any preceding one for a thousand years and more. What matter? That is a secular' question, of which they need know nothing. And sanitary reform (if true) is just such another; a matter (as slavery has been seen to be by the preachers of the United States) for the legislator, and not for those whose kingdom is not of this world.'

Others again expected, with equal wisdom, the assistance of the political economist. The fact is unde

*A most honourable exception to this rule is a sermon by the Rev. C. Richson, of Manchester, on the Sanitary Laws of the Old Testament, with notes by Dr. Sutherland.