matter; "If not, it must go." And surely that free government incurs a heavy responsibility, which brings a slur by any tardiness of its own on those principles of liberty which are committed to its charge. We know that despotisms have been able to supply the masses fully and freely with necessaries, like water, unattainable by their own efforts. If freedom is to hold its place in the respect of the masses, it must show an equal, if not a superior power for the common good. The inhabitants of ancient Jerusalem were plentifully supplied with water, both from reservoirs and pipes. Those of Rome had a gratuitous supply several times as great, in proportion to the population, as that which is considered necessary for London. The Peruvian Incas constructed aqueducts of 120 and 150 leagues in length. In Spain, both the Moors and Romans have left traces of their power, in the form of enormous aqueducts and reservoirs, to supply cities insignificant in comparison to London. The canals of Semiramis, and those of Egypt, are world-famous. Assyria and Mesopotamia are intersected by the ruins of vast watercourses; and through great part of the East, even at this day, the inhabitants are supplied with fresh and pure water by the beneficent will of their despots. Surely a free country ought to be able to do more, not less. It remains for England to show that her boasted civilization and liberty has a practical power of self-development, which can meet and satisfy the wants of an increasing population, and cleanse from her fair face such plague-spots as we have been - not describing, for too many of them are past description, buthinting at, as delicately as the nature of the subject will allow. Unless some practical proof is given to the suffering masses who inhabit our courts and alleys one single savage and heathen tribe of them, the coster-mongers, numbering, according to

we

Mr. Mayhew, thirty thousand souls-that a constitutional government can secure more palpable benefits to the many than a tyranny; unless anarchy ceases to be considered identical with freedom, and human beings to be sacrificed to a proposition in a yet infant and tentative science; must expect to see, in the course of events, a revulsion in favor of despotism, such as seized France when she raised Napoleon to the Empire; a revulsion which is more possible even in Britain, to judge by certain ugly signs on both extremes of the political horizon, than the pedants of "constitutionalism" are inclined to suppose.

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And though these permitted evils should not avenge themselves by any political retribution, yet avenge themselves, if unredressed, they surely will. They affect masses too large, interests too serious, not to make themselves bitterly felt some day or other. "This is no question," as Mr. Mill well says, "of political economy, but of general policy; we should go farther and say- of common right and justice. Therefore it is that we make no apology for any foul details through which we have led our readers. We only wish that we could show them the realities amid which thousands of their fellowsubjects are born and die. It is right that "one half of the world should know how the other half live." Neither do we apologize for having made use of severe expressions of condemnation. Such questions as these, involving not merely profits, but health, sobriety, decency, life, are to be judged of not by the code or in the language of the market, but of the Bible. Acts concerning them are not merely expedient or inexpedient, fortunate or unfortunate, but right or wrong; the wrong may be excused by ignorance; but a wrong, and therefore a self-avenging act, it remains till amended. Even the hard and soft water controversy is not a mere matter of soap

and tea expenditure, but of humanity and morality. As Hood said of the slop-sellers, so we say of the hard-water-and-animalcule-sellers,

It's not trousers and shirts you're wearing out;

It's human creatures' lives.

We may choose to look at the masses in the gross, as subjects for statistics and of course, where possible, for profits. There is One above who knows every thirst, and ache, and sorrow, and temptation of each slattern, and gin-drinker, and street-boy. The day will come when He will require an account of these neglects of ours not in the gross.

SPEECH IN BEHALF OF THE LADIES' SANITARY ASSOCIATION, 1859.

LET me begin by asking the ladies who are interesting themselves in this good work, whether they have really considered what they are about to do in carrying out their own plans? Are they aware that if their Society really succeeds, they will produce a very serious, some would think a very dangerous, change in the state of this nation? Are they aware that they would probably save the lives of some thirty or forty per cent. of the children who are born in England, and that therefore they would cause the subjects of Queen Victoria to increase at a very far more rapid rate than they do now ? And are they aware that some very wise men inform us that England is already over-peopled, and that it is an exceedingly puzzling question where we shall soon be able to find work or food for our masses, so rapidly do they increase already, in spite of the thirty or forty per cent. which kind Nature carries off yearly before they are five years old? Have they considered what they are to do with all those children whom they are going to save alive? That has to be thought of; and if they really do believe, with some political economists, that over-population is a possibility to a country which has the greatest colonial empire that the world has ever seen, then I think they had better stop in their course; and leț

the children die, as they have been in the habit of dying.

But if, on the other hand, it seems to them, as I confess it does to me, that the most precious thing in the world is a human being; that the lowest, and poorest, and the most degraded of human beings is better than all the dumb animals in the world; that there is an infinite, priceless capability in that creature, fallen as it may be; a capability of virtue, and of social and industrial use, which, if it is taken in time, may be developed up to a pitch, of which at first sight the child gives no hint whatsoever; if they believe again, that of all races upon earth now, the English race is probably the finest, and that it gives not the slightest sign whatever of exhaustion; that it seems to be on the whole a young race, and to have very great capabilities in it which have not yet been developed, and above all, the most marvellous capability of adapting itself to every sort of climate and every form of life, which any race, except the old Roman, ever has had in the world; if they consider with me that it is worth the while of political economists and social philosophers to look at the map, and see that about four fifths of the globe cannot be said as yet to be in anywise inhabited or cultivated, or in the state into which men could put it by a fair supply of population, and industry, and human intellect; then, perhaps, they may think with me that it is a duty, one of the noblest of duties, to help the increase of the English race as much as possible, and to see that every child that is born into this great nation of England be developed to the highest pitch to which we can develop him in physical strength and in beauty, as well as in intellect and in virtue. And then, in that light, it does seem to me, that this Institution - small now, but I do hope some day to become great, and to become the mother institution of many and valuable chil