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wearies about the luxury and wholesomeness of clean garments
and a clean skin, and the refreshing virtues of a
draught of spring-water, and they will very probably answer,
how are we to get them?—But, if you put these healthpreserving
comforts, without cost of money or of time, within
their reach, depend upon it, one or two amongst the many
will be moved to trv their worth, and these will be the true
and prosperous apostles of cleanliness amongst the blackcned
and begrimed inhabitants of courts, and alleys, and by-places
in their neighbourhood. In a certain degree, you will be
benefactors to the district, by the establishment of these
conveniences, and will assuredly assist in protecting the
health of the more respectable classes, by purifying the lower
and the poorer. But, in contributing to this lesser good,
which is an important portion of your duties as a District
Board, you will be also contributing to a greater good of
which the duty is imposed upon you, by an authority far
higher than that of the act by which you are appointed here.
A thoughtful writer upon this subject, whose words are
always valuable, inasmuch as they are the utterance of a
mind in which benevolence and philosophy were interfused,
has said to us,—"we see the first step that must be taken to
elevate the people: nay even to bring them within the pale
of the civilization already attained. We must improve their
sanitary condition. Until this is done, no civilizing influence
can touch them. The schoolmaster will labour in vain; the
minister of religion will labour in vain; neither can make
any progress in the fulfilment of their mission in a den of
filth. Moral purity is incompatible with bodily impurity.
Moral degradation is indissolubly united with physical
squalor. The depression and discomfort of the hovel produce
and foster obtuseness of mind, hardness of heart, selfish