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mile after mile of land. Each new addition has
been made with scarcely more reference to the
legitimate necessities of life, than if it had clustered
there by crystallisation. With no scientific forecast
to plan the whole, with little but chance and
cheapness to shape the parts, our desultory architecture
has eclipsed the conditions of health.
Draining uphill or downhill, as the case might
be, and running their aqueducts at random from
chalk-quarries or river-mud; or ponding sewage in
their cellars and digging beside it for water;
blocking-up the inlets of freshness and, equally,
the outlets of nuisance; constructing sewers to
struggle with the Thames—now to pollute its ebb,
now to be obstructed by its flow; the builders of
many generations have accumulated sanitary errors
in so intricate a system, that their apprehension
and their cure seem equally remote.
Therefore—by reason of causes, ramified through
the whole metropolis and deep-rooted in its soil,
which bind all parts together in one common
endurance of their effects—therefore cannot epidemic
disease be conquered by any exertions or by
any amelioration, short of the complete and comprehensive
cure. Against the danger we dread,
no shelter is to be found in petty reforms and
patch-work legislation. Not to inspectorships of
nuisance, but to the large mind of State-Policy,
one must look for a real emancipation from this
threatening plague.