View report page

136
probably because of the disturbed state of the political world,which
takes little heed of questions which concern health and life
merely. The report itself did scant justice to the work of the
sanitary authorities, which, though carried-on under pressure of
many needless difficulties, has had the effect of making London
the cleanest, best paved, best drained, best lighted, safest and
healthiest of great cities. The outcry against the existing system
of local self-government is largely factitious, being raised at convenient
seasons by those who desire to promote the creation of
a " municipality," against which per se I have nothing to say.
The outcry being useless at present it is now little heard.
The late Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, brought in a Public
Health (Metropolis) Bill in the Session of 1885, which, as a
measure for consolidating, with some few useful amendments,
existing scattered statutes, fourteen in number, and all bearing
more or less on the question under consideration, would have
proved serviceable. But there was not time to pass the Bill,
which, moreover, cannot be reintroduced in the current Session.
The Housing of the Working Classes (England) Act, 1885,
to which I also adverted in my last report, is a well-intentioned
measure which does not at present shew sign of bearing much fruit.
By Section 13 it was proposed to enact that, in any contract for
letting an unfurnished house for human habitation, there should
be implied a condition that the house was in all respects reasonably
fit for such habitation, a condition implied by existing law in
the letting of a furnished house; and that in the event of a breach
of such condition, any inmate of such house who suffers any loss,
by injury to health or otherwise, in consequence, should be
entitled to recover damages from the person responsible for such
breach. The Section was altered in Committee so as to be now of
little value for practical purposes; and the important Section (3)
for enabling the sites of certain prisons to be conveyed to the
Metropolitan Board of Works, at such a price as would enable the
Board, without incurring serious loss, to utilize them for the
erection of dwellings for the working classes, was so modified that
no good seems likely to come of it. These failures