Your Lordship will remember how earnest I was in December last, on the publication of the Bishop of London's Pastoral Letter, that we should at once avail ourselves of the power of the Contagious Diseases Act; as well to make immediate preparation against the threatened visitation of cholera, as to check the progress of our own native epidemics, then and still so frightfully prevalent; diseases manifestly dependent on conditions within our control, and highly favourable to the spread of the pestilence then menacing, and now still more nearly menacing us. The Bishop of London had called earnestly upon the clergymen of his diocese to co-operate with the medical profession in this object; and being desirous of ascertaining the state of intelligence and feeling of this natural class of co-operators in such a work, I visited privately every clergyman in the Eastern District of London and discussed the subject with them. Without a single exception, I found them impressed with a sense of the necessity of doing something, and with a conviction that they might materially help the medical profession in carrying out any plan of operation proposed by authority. The necessity of some such general plan is greater now than it was then, on account of the continual prevalence in their severest forms of our own epidemics, and of the nearer approach of cholera. The new "Contagious Diseases Act," the "Public Health Act," and the new "Metropolitan Sewers Act," taken together, afford greater facilities for meeting this necessity than ever before existed; and certainly it is now in the power of the Government to do more for securing the public health, and improving the physical condition of the population, than has ever yet been attempted in any age or nation,--a power which, if wisely and successfully exerted, will reflect the highest honour on the Government and the country. My intimate relation with the origin and progress of this work, and my deep conviction that it is one of the most useful to which experience and science can be applied, would render it a satisfaction to me to spend the remainder of my life in assisting to complete it.--I am, my Lord, with much esteem and regard, very faithfully yours, SOUTHWOOD SMITH.