"It seems to me right and proper," said Mr. Ritchie in introducing the Bill, "that in regard to the great question of public health in London the County Council ought to be charged with the performance of duty, which in the opinion of the Local Government Board after inquiry, has not been adequately and properly performed by the local authority." These sections were strongly opposed by some of the prominent Vestries, being held to be "degrading and destructive of local self-government by completely subordinating the local to the central authority." The self-government which many people like is the being able to do exactly as they themselves like, regardless of everybody else's likes and rights. And it is the same with many local government authorities. Their idea of self-government too often is to govern for their own objects, and their own interests, regardless of the infinitely greater interests and rights of the great community around them; and when it is brought home to them that they are only a small integral part of a great community, that their sphere of self-government can only be a very limited one, and that they cannot be allowed either by action or neglect to injure the community, they resent it with no little outcry. The principle of self-government, however, was not one to which appeal could be made, for it had been dragged through the mire by too many of the local authorities. Once the unity of London assumed definite shapes, as it did in the new Central Authority representing the whole of London, Vestry self-government, except upon certain lines and within certain limitations, was doomed; for it would have to make way for a far larger system of self-government--the self-government of London by Londoners. Moreover, prolonged experience had proved that the Vestries could not be relied on to enforce the laws, and it was manifest that some effective provision must be devised for preventing them perpetually thwarting the intentions and defeating the imperative enactments of Parliament designed for the welfare of the community at large. It was unfortunate, however, for the sanitary welfare of great masses of the people of London that the principle thus recognised and adopted by Parliament was not given fuller effect to than it was, for it is the only principle upon which any really sound system of public health administration for London can be based. A few years later the principle was reaffirmed by Parliament. During the summer of 1892 the appearance of cholera on the west coast of Europe--particularly Hamburg--exposed London to the importation of cases of this disease. The unsatisfactory position of the Council with regard to London administration for the prevention of epidemic disease was at once made evident.