"The principle might be distinctly recognised that the City will not tolerate within its municipal jurisdiction the continuance of houses absolutely incompatible with healthy habitation. "Here terminates my statement of the powers now vested in you for the maintenance of the public health. "Authority so complete for this noble purpose has never before been delegated to any municipal body in the country. "If the deliberate promises of Science be not an empty delusion, it is practicable to reduce human mortality within your jurisdiction to nearly the half of the present prevalence." The most valuable and weighty of all his conclusions was that affixing the responsibility for the existing mass of insanitation and consequent misery. With a courage worthy of all admiration he did not hesitate, regardless of the consequences to himself, to fix the responsibility and blame where they were due. "The fact is that, except against wilful violence, life is very little cared for by the law." Of Parliament he wrote:-- "Fragments of legislation there are, indeed, in all directions; enough to establish precedents, enough to testify some half-conscious possession of a principle; but for usefulness little beyond this. The statutes tell that now and then there has reached to high places the wail of physical suffering. They tell that our law makers, to the tether of a very scanty knowledge, have, not unwillingly, moved to the redress of some clamorous wrong.... But ... their insufficiencies constitute a national scandal, ... something not far removed from a national sin.... "The landlord must be held responsible for the decent and wholesome condition of his property, and for such conduct of his tenants as will maintain that condition." The clear, precise, and unqualified enunciation of such a principle must have given a shock to many of the members of the governing authority of the "City," and excited their wrath, the more especially as it was so absolutely sound and true. "The death of a child by smallpox," he went on to say, "would in most instances call for a verdict of 'homicide by omission' against the parent who had neglected daily opportunities of giving it immunity from that disease by the simple process of vaccination; the death of an adult by typhus would commonly justify still stronger condemnation (though with more difficulty of fixing and proportioning the particular responsibility) against those who ignore the duties of property, and who knowingly let for the occupation of the poor dwellings unfit even for brute tenants, dwellings absolutely incompatible with health." And then he proceeds to explain and justify and enlarge upon his assertion of the responsibility of the landlord.