"And how much more justly may the neighbour appeal to you against each such nuisance as an interference with his privacy; against the smoke, the stink, the fever that bursts through each inlet of his dwelling, intrudes on him at every hour, disturbs the enjoyment and shortens the duration of his life. And for the rights of property--they are not only pecuniary. Life, too, is a great property, and your Act (of 1851) asserts its rights." "The landlord of some overthronged lodging-house complains that to reduce the number of his tenantry, to lay on water, to erect privies, or to execute some other indispensable sanitary work, would diminish his rental--in the spirit of your Act it is held a sufficient reply that human life is at stake--and that a landlord in his dealings with the ignorant and indefensive poor cannot be suffered to estimate them at the value of cattle, to associate them in worse than bestial habits, or let to them for hire at however moderate a rent the certain occasions of suffering and death." "Seeing the punctuality with which weekly visitation is made for the collection of rents in these wretched dwellings it would not be unreasonable to insist on some regulations for the clean and wholesome condition of his premises, water supply, and scavenging, &c." Such a regulation would "render it indispensable to the landlord of such holdings to promote cleanly and decent habits among his tenants--even to obtain security for their good behaviour." The picture thus presented of the sanitary condition of the people residing in the "City" about the middle of the last century is--it must be acknowledged--a terrible one; but it rests upon unimpeachable testimony. The very grave and serious conclusion, however, follows from it--that if the evils were thus terrible in the "City," with a comparatively small population, only a little more than a twentieth of that of the metropolis, and where there was a local government with wide powers for dealing with matters affecting the public health--how infinitely more serious was the condition of things in the "greater London" with its huge population, and where there was practically no local government, and no punitive law for insanitary misdoings and crimes. In some degree, the evils the people suffered under were of their own making, though many excuses can be urged in extenuation. In some degree, too, the people were unquestionably the victims of circumstances. But in the main, they were the victims of other people's iniquities. It was those circumstances which the Government should have altered, or, at any rate, have endeavoured to control or modify--it was the unlimited power to do evil that the Government should have checked and curbed; but "greater London" was virtually left outside the pale of remedial legislative treatment by Parliament. CHAPTER I, PART IV