Sanitary legislation is all very well, but it deals with effects and not with causes. Such dens as those described, not by my imagination, be it noted, but by unimpeachable authorities, are nothing less than breeding-houses of pestilence. If we swept them clean to-morrow others would soon be found as bad, for the filthy and unsanitary habits of these immigrant aliens are bred in the bone, and wherever they go they take them with them. It cannot be healthy for a nation to have such a sore as this existing in its side, yet we allow this plague-spot to continue in our midst, and to spread its contamination far and wide. If we wish to perpetuate that healthy, sturdy stock which has made England what she is, we must prevent the strain from being defiled by this ceaseless pouring in of the unclean and unhealthy of other lands. "A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump," and nothing is more contagious than dirty and unsanitary habits. The physical health of the people should be the first care of the State, for upon it depends not only the present, but the future, of our race. _Salus populi suprema est lex_--and before this inviolable law all other considerations must bow. The Majority Report of the Sweating Committee--from which Lord Dunraven dissented--complacently recommended the more frequent use of "limewash" in the sweaters' dens and workshops where these indigent foreigners chiefly congregate. But it will require a great deal more than "limewash" to whiten this hideous evil. People who bring with them filthy and unsanitary habits are a standing source of danger to the rest of the community. Cattle from an infected district are refused admission to our ports; surely the health of even one of the meanest of our people is of more importance than many cattle. CHAPTER VIII. THE SOCIAL EVIL. Closely bound up with the sanitary danger, indeed inseparable from it, is the social evil. The value of healthy habitations, of personal cleanliness, of pure air, of a sufficient but not exorbitant amount of work--all that in fact tends to produce the _mens sana in corpore sano_--all this is fully acknowledged and known; yet we freely throw open our doors to a class whose habits and customs admittedly militate against all these powerful agencies for good.