The eloquent outcry, from writers of all creeds and parties, demanding better houses for the people at length made itself heard within the walls of Westminster. But it was not until 1868 that the Torrens Act was passed, the first attempt of the Legislature to deal with slum property. This was followed by the Artisans Dwelling Act of 1875, which enabled local authorities to compulsorily purchase slum areas and re-build sanitary dwellings. In Birmingham, where Mr. Joseph Chamberlain was mayor, magnificent use was made of these powers to the great present benefit of the city. In Liverpool, Manchester, and other towns something was done, but as the business depended in the main on local initiative, and the spending of money, much more remained undone. A few small measures were passed, but they did not lead to any great practical work being put in hand, and again it was the man of letters who wakened the national conscience. I remember well in the eighties the appearance of "How the Poor Live" by George R. Sims and the interest and sympathy it aroused. There is no exaggeration in the book, but merely a graphic record of fact, and it proves with melancholy certainty the small progress that had been made since the days of Dickens, Kingsley and D'Israeli. It was with a great chorus of self congratulation and the loud braying of journalistic trumpets that on March 4th, 1884, a Royal Commission was announced to inquire into the Housing of the Working Classes. It is almost forgotten to-day, but in its time it aroused great hopes in the breast of social reformers. Sir Charles Dilke was Chairman, the Prince of Wales himself was a working member of the commission, Cardinal Manning, Lord Salisbury, Samuel Morley, Jesse Collings, Henry Broadhurst and other great public men of the day were his colleagues. The overcrowding, the immorality and disease and waste caused by bad housing, the terrible tax of rent on the incomes of the poor were all rehearsed in painful detail before these great ones of the earth. But when one comes to remedies and recommendations, there is nothing except the most trivial and inadequate propositions that the eminent ones can agree upon. Their first suggestion is that vestries and district boards should put in force existing by-laws, though who was to make them do it is not mentioned. Then they think it would be an added decency to the lives of the poor if there were more mortuaries near their homes to take the dead bodies from the already overcrowded rooms--as though the problem they were there to consider was not the housing of the quick, but the housing of the dead. Building by-laws, sanitary inspection, and workmen's trains are a few of the Mother Partington Mop remedies that this great Commission had to offer to keep back the sea of troubles that overwhelmed the poor of our great cities in their struggle for decent existence.