But if I have addressed myself to this objection, partly because--to the very limited extent in which it starts from a true premiss, it deserves reply; and partly because I wish emphatically to declare my conviction, that such evils as I denounce are not the more to be tolerated for their rising in unwilling Pauperism, rather than in willing Filth; yet I doubt whether poverty be so important an element in the case as some people imagine. And although I have referred especially to a poor neighbourhood--because here it is that knowledge and personal refinement will have least power to compensate for the insufficiencies of public law; yet I have no hesitation in saying that sanitary mismanagement spreads very appreciable evils high in the middle ranks of society; and from some of the consequences, so far as I am aware, no station can call itself exempt. The fact is, as I have said, that, except against wilful violence, life is practically very little cared for by the law. Fragments of legislation there are, indeed, in all directions: enough to establish precedents--enough to testify some half-conscious possession of a principle; but, for usefulness, little beyond this. The statutes tell that now and then, there has reached to high places the wail of physical suffering. They tell that our law-makers, to the tether of a very scanty knowledge, have, not unwillingly, moved to the redress of some clamorous wrong. But--tested by any scientific standard of what should be the completeness of sanitary legislation; or tested by any personal endeavour to procure the legal correction of gross and glaring evils; their insufficiencies, I do not hesitate to say, constitute a national scandal, and, perhaps in respect of their consequences, something not far removed from a national sin.