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6 MORTALITY OF THE CITY OF LONDON.
The rate of mortality, estimated from these data,
for a population of 125,500, would indicate somewhat
less than twenty-two deaths (21.92) out of
every thousand living persons.
Last year it was my painful duty to record the
ravages of pestilence, then indeed hardly terminated,
under the pressure of which our general death-rate
had risen to the alarming height of thirty in the
thousand. On this present occasion, I have the
happier task of laying before you the evidences of
a mortality lessened considerably below its habitual
average; and I rejoice in congratulating your Honourable
Court on the testimony thus borne to the
success of your sanitary exertions. For although,
without question, some large share of this striking
improvement may have depended on circumstances
beyond our cognizance or control; although it may
in part be but an instance of that tendency to periodical
alternations of activity and repose which
we recognize in disease, as in other operations of
nature; although I should be over-sanguine if I
believed, and premature if I stated, that your sanitary
measures during the past twelve months had
wrought such a change in the City as to ensure a continuance
of this year's comparative healthfulness; yet
I may venture without hesitation to assure you, that
the labours of the Commission have been fruitful of
real and demonstrable advantage to the health of
the people; that a sensible diminution has occurred
in the physical causes of disease ; and that, from