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as either this malarious influence is exerted on them,
or other kindred miasms are furnished by their soil.
And it is my belief, from such evidence as is before
me, that the general liability of London to suffer the
epidemic visitation will cease, whenever an efficient
and inodorous system of drainage, conveying all
refuse of the metropolis beyond range of its atmosphere,
shall be substituted for our present elaborate
disguise of an unremoved nuisance. I deem it
right to state this explicitly: not only because it is
my duty to give you, in simple truth, the conclusions
to which I am led by careful reflexion on the facts;
but likewise because—for the credit of sanitary
medicine and for your justification in the awful
presence of a recurrent pestilence within your
jurisdiction, it ought to be thoroughly known, how
much of the cause is common to the entire metropolis,
and has not admitted of removal by measures
of partial improvement. And the circumstances will
perhaps excuse me if I repeat to your Honourable
Court—represented as you are both in the Metropolitan
Commission of Sewers and in Parliament,
where this question must shortly be discussed, that
the universal reform of our metropolitan drainage,
at whatever imaginable pecuniary cost, is an urgent
claim and necessity, unless this great city is again,
as two centuries ago, to live under the constant
alarm of increasing epidemic destruction.
Reverting, however, to the more especial relations
of the disease within your territory, you will