"They knew it was quite impossible," said the Bishop of Chichester, "to bring the owners of even one small court or alley, much less the owners or occupiers of any large district, to concur in any measure for the general good of their particular locality." The fact was that nothing but the imperative directions of the law would secure the removal of evils or curtail the practice of infamous abuses--and even when the law was enacted for their remedy, nothing but its rigorous enforcement with adequate penalties would make it effective. As the result of the meeting, a deputation waited on Lord John Russell, the then Prime Minister. His reply was not encouraging. "In this city," he said, "there is very naturally and properly great jealousy of any interference either with local rights or individual will and freedom from control." That great jealousy proved to be so powerful that nothing was attempted by the Government except an abortive effort to deal with the loathsome and insanitary evils of intramural interments where vested interests were neither powerful nor loud voiced. The Act was so defective that it never came into operation, and two more years elapsed before the Government again essayed to deal with the subject. And in the meanwhile that most horrible evil was permitted to work its will upon the dwellers in the metropolis. To the enthusiasm of an individual, and not of the Government, was due the first effective attempt to grapple with one of the widespread, deep-seated evils which were working such havoc among the people. The most disastrous and vicious forms of overcrowding were at the time to be found in the so-called Common Lodging Houses--the sink of insanitary abominations. These were the temporary and casual abodes of the dregs of London humanity--of the tramps, and the unfortunates, and the mendicants and criminals, male and female--when they could afford the penny or pence to pay for their night's lodging. In most cases these houses were low brothels and hotbeds of crime and moral degeneracy, their foul and filthy condition making them great sources and propagators of contagious and loathsome diseases. In the "City" the authorities had power to regulate and control them. Not so, however, in the metropolis. There, no one had any authority in the matter, nor was there any authority for any one to have. Lord Ashley, truly discerning that the one and only way of dealing with this evil was by regulation and constraint, introduced a Bill[43] and actually carried it through Parliament, and two years later got another Act[44] embodying amendments which made it more effective. What the Common Lodging House owner or keeper--anxious to secure the utmost profits from his property and regardless of all consequences to others--would not do, he was, by those Acts, made to do.