And so, as inspection was, from the house "owners'" point of view, an unpopular thing, too much money was not spent by Vestries upon Sanitary Inspectors' salaries, and even in the best inspected parishes or districts the portion inspected was small indeed compared with the whole of the parish or district. How much was left undone, and left undone for years, was proved over and over again by whole areas being represented by their Medical Officers of Health as insanitary, or by their having to shut up houses as unfit for human habitation. The attempt made by Parliament in 1866--in the scheme embodied in the 35th Section of the Sanitary Act--to provide a remedy for overcrowding, and to secure the maintenance of a moderate standard of cleanliness and sanitation in the tenement-houses, had been an excellent one; and Parliament improved the scheme in 1874 by extending its scope. Almost the whole of the existing evils lay in these tenement-houses, for it was there where the great mass of the disease, filth, and misery of London was to be found, and there where the greatest overcrowding, and the deepest moral and physical degradation existed. But with the few exceptions already described practically no use had been made of the powers. "Vested rights in filth and dirt" had still too large a representation upon, and too powerful a grip of the local sanitary authorities for any action to be adopted which would entail trouble upon the possessors of those rights. Some Vestries, for form's sake, had made regulations but never put them in force. A few had tentatively put them in force, and promptly dropped them. A large proportion of them did not take even that much trouble, but simply ignored them altogether; and so, some seventeen years after the Act was passed, the whole scheme had ceased to be operative, and was in complete abeyance. In December, 1883, the Local Government Board, having realised the gravity of the situation, endeavoured to get the Vestries and District Boards to take action, but the Local Government Board could not compel them to make such regulations, as there was no power of compulsion, and there was no penalty for refusal to enforce or even to make them.[155] The Vestries and District Boards were, in fact, masters of the situation, and could act or not act, just as they pleased--and most of them did not act. Various were the excuses made by the Vestries for doing nothing. The feeling which prevailed in the Vestry of Clerkenwell was that-- "The regulations generally were of such an inquisitorial and troublesome character that they were unsuited to an Englishman's home. For instance, it was shown that in some cases even clergymen occupied lodgings which would be reached by these regulations."