Works of drainage and water supply are completed, or are in an advanced state, in 70 towns. Mortgages have been sanctioned— For drainage works nearly 1¾ and water supply, millions sterling; ──────────────────────────────────── For private works of about £45,000; drainage and water supply, ──────────────────────────────────── For paving, street about £200,000; improvements, &c., Making a total of nearly two millions sterling devoted to sanitary improvement.[24] Footnote 24: This has been since greatly increased: see Appendix, p. 129. [ED.] It is difficult at present to give the average cost of these combined and complete sanitary works; but the total expense for public and private works of drainage and water supply for houses of from £10 to £20 per annual rental, may be taken at 4d. per week per house. The great obstacle to sanitary progress is the fear of rates, not so much on the part of the poor, who gladly pay for the improvements, but on the part of the owners of small tenements, by whom chiefly opposition is raised to the application of this Act. In the town of Alnwick, public and private works of sewerage and drainage have been completed. There have been laid down about twenty miles of sewers and drains, and seventeen miles of apparatus for water supply, at a total cost, for the combined works, of 4d. per week per house for the term of thirty years; after the expiration of which period the cost of the works, both principal and interest, will have become liquidated, and the only expense thereafter will be for maintenance. On inspecting these works, I saw in the tenements occupied by the lowest classes a high degree of cleanliness, wholesomeness, and comfort, and heard from the inhabitants an expression of the greatest satisfaction. We have as yet no certain knowledge of the extent to which such works are capable of preventing sickness and lengthening life. But the most perfect drainage, combined with the most ample supply of water, will not alone secure for the public health all which it is practicable to accomplish. There must also be provision for the better construction of the houses of the poor; for the prevention of overcrowding; for street ventilation and cleansing, and for the exclusion from the neighbourhood of human dwellings of filth-creating animals and of noxious trades. When all this is done, as it might be done, and as it would be done were there a general perception of the crying evils it would remedy, Epidemics would disappear, the more formidable of them immediately, and all of them, I believe, in the end. From the whole of these facts and observations we see—