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177
have been no prevalence of disease in the house or
The neighbourhood, but the children may be chubby
and robust. Now these and like considerations have
andoubtedly from time to time arrested my action
???n regard to property which I had desired to bring
under the operation of the Act, and have made me
but off my action until something additional might
???irise to justify or compel me. The Amendment
Act of 1879 seems to me to have been singularly illconceived
and ill-constructed; and has to a large
extent defeated the intentions and destroyed the
usefulness of the original Act. Its main features
are: that it gives the neglectful and unworthy land???ord,
whom the former Act punished, the power to
compel a Vestry to purchase, at a sum to be determined
by arbitration, the property which they
condemn to be demolished, or even order to be
???horoughly repaired, and thus probably to obtain a
pecuniary reward for his evil-doings; and that it
gives to Vestries the power of retaining the property
thus purchased, of building model dwellings in its
place, and of becoming the landlords of houses
intended for the reception of the kind of inmates
who were displaced. I cannot say that I think it
desirabable that a Vestry should become the landlord
of a number of small houses, scattered at irregu-
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