The Metropolitan Internments Bill, introduced in 1850, was a much-needed reform, and furnished _Punch_ with an occasion for free-spoken denunciation of "King Cholera's friends," Boards of Guardians, and other obstructives who "laugh to scorn doctors and drains, and uphold the great cause of dirt." His method of dealing with the offenders is generally direct: sometimes it takes the form of extravagant irony, as in the "account of my travels in search of self-government":-- What is it to _me_ that fever is never absent from these places--that infants do not rear, and men die before their time--that sickness engenders pauperism--that filth breeds depression, and depression drives to drink? What do you mean by telling me that cholera slew in Rotherhithe its 205 victims in every 10,000, in St. Olave's its 181, in St. Saviour's its 153, in Lambeth its 120, while in the Strand it carried off only 35, in Kensington 33, in Marylebone 17, and in Hampstead 8, out of the same number? Still, British landlords did what they liked with their own, and self-government is unimpaired. The satellites and slaves of an encroaching centralization are kept at arm's length, and if they have succeeded in putting down sewers, at least we have triumphed in not laying our house-drains into 'em. It is with pride, therefore, I repeat, that whatever may be the case in the country (where I regret to see the hateful Public Health Act seems to be extending its ravages), in London we are still enjoying the enormous, the invaluable privileges of self-government, and that if Epidemic Cholera should visit us again, we may confidently show him to his old haunts in 1832 and 1849, and so convince him that, in this free country, _he_, too, is at liberty "TO DO WHAT HE LIKES WITH HIS OWN." [Illustration: THE END OF GOG AND MAGOG; OR, THINGS VERY BAD IN THE CITY] _Punch_ naturally applauded the Bill brought in by Sir George Grey, in 1856, to reform the Corporations of London, but would have preferred a more drastic measure, and warned the unrepentant City Fathers of the dangers of refusing to accept the liberal terms offered them. [Sidenote: _London's Vanished Glories_]