* * * * * II. In the provision of a Cemetery, it is required by the Act of Parliament, that ‘the Burial-Board shall have reference to the convenience of access thereto from the Parish or Parishes for which the same is provided;’ and it is legalised, that ‘any Burial-Board may make such arrangements as they may from time to time think fit, for facilitating the conveyance of the Bodies of the Dead from the Parish, or the place of Death, to the Burial-ground which shall be provided.’ It cannot but be obvious to you, that the choice of a site for your Cemetery might be such as to interpose very serious obstacles in the way of interment, even for the richest classes; and under the most favorable circumstances, the removal of the dead to a distance of some miles from their previous residence, cannot but threaten serious difficulty to the poor. Assuming--what various conditions of the Act of Parliament render almost inevitable, that your Cemetery must be distant at least six miles from the centre of the City, the present funeral charges can hardly be maintained without increase, if the traffic is to be conducted on the same principles as heretofore. The price for which an artisan could procure a decent funeral for his wife or child, within a stone’s throw of his door, will unavoidably be augmented by every mile you add to the distance, if the conveyance is still to depend on the old means and arrangements. When I consider the classes of persons likely, as inhabitants of the City, to claim interment in your Cemetery--classes, among which the predominance of narrow, if not necessitous, circumstances will be frequent; when, for instance, in a year’s official returns, I see that artisans and paupers make more than two-thirds of your entire classified mortality; I cannot but think this aspect of the matter a very important one. From some years’ experience of your death-register, I should say that, of City funerals, there would not be one in ten where the friends could afford to disregard an additional expenditure of half a guinea; and, in the majority of instances, I am persuaded that a smaller addition would be enough to cause inconvenience and distress. It therefore seems to me certain, that your plan for extramural sepulture, however perfect at all other points, might either entirely fail of its purpose, or become cruelly oppressive to the poor, by the simple expensiveness of approaching the burial-place. And I suppose it was in anticipation of the difficulties here adverted to, that the framers of the Metropolitan Burials Act introduced the permissive clause, which I just quoted, empowering Burial-Boards ‘to facilitate the conveyance’ of the dead, and thus virtually rendering them responsible, so far as the poorer classes are concerned, for the cheapness and efficiency of such conveyance.