ship—which took twenty-four days to reach Lisbon, and then needed to be docked to undergo a thorough repair, had been duly inspected. And lastly, the notorious _Australian_, before her third futile attempt to proceed on her {240} voyage, had, her owners tell us, received “the full approbation of the government inspector.” Neither does the like supervision give security to land-travelling. The iron bridge at Chester, which, breaking, precipitated a train into the Dee, had passed under the official eye. Inspection did not prevent a column on the South-Eastern from being so placed as to kill a man who put his head out of the carriage window. The locomotive that burst at Brighton lately, did so notwithstanding a State-approval given but ten days previously. And—to look at the facts in the gross—this system of supervision has not prevented the increase of railway accidents; which, be it remembered, has arisen _since_ the system was commenced. [27] So complete is the failure of this and other sanitary bodies, that, at the present moment (March, 1854) a number of philanthropic gentlemen are voluntarily organizing a “Health Fund for London,” with the view of meeting the threatened invasion of the Cholera; and the plea for this _purely private enterprise_, is, that the Local Boards of Health and Boards of Guardians are inoperative, from “_ignorance_, 1st, _of the extent of the danger_; 2nd, _of the means which experience has discovered for meeting it; and_ 3rd, _of the comparative security which those means may produce_.” [28] The _Builder_ remarks, that “the removal of the brick-duties has not yet produced that improvement in the make of bricks which we ought to find, . . . . . but as bad bricks can be obtained for less than good bricks, so long as houses built of the former will sell as readily as if the better had been used, no improvement is to be expected.”