Mr. Bryce asked the Secretary of State for the Home Department whether his attention had been called to the two last reports presented to the Whitechapel District Board of Works by the Medical Officer of Health on the sanitary condition of the Whitechapel district, in which he condemned, as unsanitary and ill-arranged, several new buildings recently erected in that district, and expressed the opinion that amendments in the existing Building Acts were urgently required; and whether, if sufficient powers to prevent the erection or order the closing of unsanitary dwelling were not now possessed by local authorities, he would undertake to bring in a Bill to amend the Building Acts in this important particular, by investing the proper local authorities with such powers. Sir W. Harcourt said he would be glad to introduce Bills upon this and many other subjects, but there was no time for them.--Evening Standard, June 18, 1883. 'No time!' It is well, with that answer ringing in our ears, to turn to the Parliamentary proceedings and discover what the important questions are which are engrossing the entire attention of the Legislature, and leaving 'no time' for such a matter as the constant menace to public health which exists in the present system of 'Housing the Poor.' I will not enumerate them, or I might be tempted into a political disquisition, which would be out of place; but the reader can, with considerable profit to himself, find them and make a note of them. The list of important measures which have consumed the session and left 'no time' for this question will be instructive and amusing--amusing because the discussions which have taken up the time of the House contain in themselves all the elements of screaming farce. And, talking of screaming farce, I am reminded that we met Mr. J. L. Toole, and that he has not been introduced yet. Room by all means, and at once for Mr. J. L. Toole--not the Toole of Toole's Theatre--the popular comedian who has made tomfoolery a fine art and burlesque a science, but his living, breathing image as he appeared to us, 'Mug,' voice, and gesture, at the door of a house at which we lately knocked in search of information as to the profits of hat-box making. Our J. L. Toole didn't tell us anything as to these profits, though he was very funny--he cracked wheezes that even John Laurence himself might give off without blushing. He suggested that while we were about it perhaps 'he might as well tell us who he worked for as how much he got, and then we could go round and offer to make hat-boxes a halfpenny a dozen under.' We didn't get much out of our J. L. Toole. CHAPTER VIII.