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60
reared the Crystal Palace, can hardly fear the
enterprise of draining poison from its infected
towns. A people that has freed its foreign slaves
at twenty millions' ransom, will never let its home
population perish, for cheapness sake, in the ignominious
ferment of their filth.
Therefore, gentlemen, advisedly I state the
danger as it seems to me. England has again
become subject to a plague, the recurrence of
which—or the duration—or the malignity, no
human being can predict.
But, if I state the danger, so likewise, to the
best of my belief, I state the remedy and defence.
Colossal statistics concur with circumstantial inquiry
to refer this disease, in common with many
others that scourge our population, distinctly and
infallibly, to the working of local causes—of causes
susceptible of removal—of causes which it devolves
on our Legislature to remove.
The exemption we seek is worth a heavy purchase.
My thoughts turn involuntarily to the
epidemics of former centuries, to their frequent
returns and immense fatality. I reflect on the
Plague, and how it influenced the average deathrate
of London; how in 1593 it doubled it, in
1603 trebled it, in 1625 quadrupled it; and how
(after a less considerable visitation in 1636) it
actually multiplied the mortality sevenfold in the
tremendous epidemic of' 65. The ravages of that
pestilence are best appreciated in the fact, that we