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Considering the extent to which the time of Parliament
was absorbed in dealing with affairs in Russia, the Bill
made rapid strides through the House, and became law early
in August. Certain preliminaries prescribed by the new
Act having been carried into effect in the following
November, its provisions came into actual and practical
operation on the first of January, 1850, when the ratepayers
of the great city, by their representatives in the new system,
entered upon the consideration and execution of a great
sanitary work of the utmost importance to the public weal,
and under auspices, and with a machinery so simple, and
yet so poweiful, as to remove its ultimate and successful
completion from the region of doubt or insurmountable
difficulty. That very machinery, indeed, invested the
operations which it had to conduct for the common good,
with additional interest and consideration, for its motive
spring lay in a principle as venerable as the British constitution
itself—that of local self-government, with which
the citizens of the metropolis of the world were then
entrusted for the management of their own affairs, though
it had been conceded for at least twenty years to the inhabitants
of every municipality or corporate town throughout
the country. That ancient principle, associated as it
was with the kindred one of representation, was from that
day put upon its trial on a far more extensive scale than it
had ever previously been, and under circumstances which
augured well for its complete success. The members of the
new Metropolitan Board of Works and of the various
District Boards and Vestries throughout the metropolis and
its suburbs were left, by their public conduct and acts, to
vindicate the wisdom and utility of the measure, and to
justify the grounds on which it had been entrusted to their
keeping.
1855. 1885.
The population of London was 2,547,039 4,083,928
The number of inhabited houses was 305,933 480,186
The death-rate per 1,000 persons was 243 19 7