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HABITATIONS AND SOCIAL CONDITION OF THE POOR. 89
origin in this uncontrolled evil. I revert to it because
of its infinite importance. While it maintains
physical filth that is indescribable, while it perpetuates
fever and the allied disorders, while it
creates mortality enough to mask the results of all
your sanitary progress, its moral consequences are
too dreadful to be detailed. I have to deal with the
matter only as it relates to bodily health. Whatever
is morally hideous and savage in the scene—
whatever contrast it offers to the superficial magnificence
of the metropolis—whatever profligacy it
implies and continues—whatever recklessness and
obscene brutality arise from it—whatever deep injury
it inflicts on the community—whatever debasement
or abolition of God's image in men's hearts is
tokened by it—these matters belong not to my
office, nor would it become me to dwell on them.
Only because of the physical sufferings am I entitled
to speak; only because pestilence is for ever within
the circle; only because Death so largely comforts
these poor orphans of civilization. To my duty it
alone belongs, in such respects, to tell you where
disease ravages the people under your charge, and
wherefore ; but while I lift the curtain to show you
this—a curtain which convention would gladly leave
unraised, you cannot but see that side by side with
pestilence, there stalks a deadlier presence; blighting
the moral existence of a rising population;
rendering their hearts hopeless, their acts ruffianly
and incestuous; and scattering, while society averts