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19
Exceptional circumstances, and exceptional and trying seasons
such as we have had for the last three years with their almost
unprecedented rainfall, must and will arise to test both branches
of the work; but with the proved capacity the Committee have
manifested not only for grappling with such immense difficulties as
attended their first organization scheme, but of overcoming them,
we need feel no concern as to the perpetuity of their success.
It used, indeed, to be said that a Vestry could never perform
this kind of work either so economically or so efficiently as a
Contractor could—in other words, that the Contractors who were
engaged in this special business were in possession of facilities
for the work, and of opportunities arising from their vocation
generally, to which Vestries could never attain. This egregious
fallacy is no longer in favour here, as it is now happily an
established fact in the experience of the Islington Vestry, that
the work which the Contractors used to do badly at an enormous
cost, they, as a Vestry, can do efficiently with a very moderate
expenditure, and at the same time save the Parish those exorbitant
profits which the Contractors reaped exclusively in their
own personal interests.
CONCLUSION.
And one word more. The Registrar General, for reasons known
to himself, fixes 17 deaths per 1,000 as an ideal death rate, but
regards 20 per 1,000 as about the extent of perfection we can hope
to reach. Why it should be 17 I know not, and if 17 why not 16,
why not 15 ? But we have reached in Islington the 20, and we
rejoice at it. And so the improvements in our water and drainage
schemes have done a great work. Would it not be worth while,
remembering that there are yet so many things to be attended to,
and so many reforms needed, in respect, chiefly, to the drinking
habits of the people and their method of life, for sanitarians to turn
their attention for a few years to these sadly neglected topics,
instead of confining their thoughts almost exclusively, as they have
been doing of late years, to the water as the source of all ills and