average health enjoyed by the workers in those mills is greater than that of any other class of workpeople in the neighbourhood where the mills are situate, and where the general condition of the population is deemed good; the difference in the general health of the two classes (indicated by the proportions of death—of 1 in 27 of the general population, and 1 in 31 of the manufacturing population), was ascribed to the difference of the residences. My colleagues and myself of the central board of the Factory Commission of Inquiry were fully sensible that the effect of one cause on the health of the working population could not fairly be judged of unless its operation was observed under various circumstances, and unless amongst them the influence of the domestic circumstances, as well as the nature of the work and the place of work, were duly examined. We could not but deem it important that the state of the dwellings of the workpeople, who were the subject of inquiry, should also be investigated; and we gave instructions with that view to the district medical commissioners; but the limited time allowed by Parliament for the investigation, prevented its being made as we desired, a circumstance that, for the sake of the workpeople, is much to be regretted, as great injury is done to them by attention being diverted, as it commonly has been, from the real means of prevention.[15] M. Parent Du Châtelet and M. d’Arcet having presented to the Board of Health of Paris a report on an investigation with a view to discover the physical or medical means by which particular sorts of work might be ameliorated, observe— “Perhaps it will be said that the task has been already performed, and that several celebrated men, whose works are in the hands of all the world, have preceded us in this career, without leaving to their successors the hope to add anything to what they have published. “We are assured beforehand that this objection will not be made by our colleagues, who have penetrated into manufactures and have studied their influence with a mind free from prejudice. It is because we have studied the works which treat of the maladies of artisans, and have seen a great number of these workmen in their shops; it is because we have compared books with actual observation; it is, finally, because we have not believed authors on their word, and have subjected them all to a severe verification, that we have seen the insufficiency, nay more, the inaccuracy of the greater part of their assertions.