'While I was at Toulon there were issued from the Local Government Board the circulars on the Housing of the Working Class, which I had prepared before leaving London.... One circular, December 29th, 1883 ... called on the Vestries to make use of the powers which they possessed for regulating the condition of houses let in lodgings. Another, December 30th ... called attention to their powers under the Sanitary Acts, and under the Artisans and Labourers' Dwellings Acts; and one of the same date to a similar effect went to all urban sanitary districts throughout the country, while a further circular with digests of the laws was sent out on January 7th, 1884. This action was afterwards repeated by Chamberlain and others, and taken for new, and again by Walter Long.' But, naturally, the first man to do it stirred up a hornets' nest. _Punch_ of the first week in January, 1884, derides the 'Bitter Cry of Bumbledom' against Dilke and Mr. Hugh Owen, [Footnote: Years after Sir Hugh Owen, G.C.B., wrote to Dilke: 'I shall always remember that I owed my first step in the Order of the Bath to you.'] Secretary to the Local Government Board: '_Us_ to blame? That's a capital notion! Drat them and their "statutes" and "digests"! "Convenience of reference." Ah! that is one of their imperent sly jests. Removal of Noosances? Yah! If we started on _that_ lay perniskers There is more than a few in the Westries 'ud feel suthin' singein' their wiskers, Or BUMBLE'S a Dutchman. Their Circ'lar--it's mighty obliging--defines 'em, The Noosances namely; I wonder if parties _read_ Circ'lars as signs 'em, If so, Local Government Boarders must be most oncommonly knowin', And I'd like to 'eave bricks at that DILKE and his long-winded myrmidon OWEN. The public's got Slums on the brain, and with sanitry bunkum's have busted. _We_ make a more wigorous use of the powers with which we're entrusted! Wy, if we are at it all day with their drains, ashpits, roofs, walls, and windies, Wot time shall we 'ave for our feeds and our little porochial shindies! And all for the 'labouring classes'--the greediest, ongratefullest beggars. I tell you these Radical lot and their rubbishy littery eggers, Who talk of neglected old brooms, and would 'ave _us_ turn to at their handles, Are Noosances wus than bad smells and the rest o' their sanitry "scandals."' Sir Charles's main object in local government was to decentralize, and he sought to move in this direction by stimulating the exercise of existing powers and the habit of responsibility in local popularly elected bodies. But inquiry was also necessary.