The chief objection which has been raised against the measure, by those who have conscientiously or interestedly resisted its operation, has been to the constitution of a General Board of Health in London, having some check over the doings of those local bodies to whom the working out of the act has been intrusted. This is denounced by the word “centralisation,” but the Poor Law Board daily exercises, without remark, a much more stringent authority over Boards of Guardians, who are just as much representative bodies as Town Councils, than any which is vested in the Board of Health. In many places where the act has been applied, the need of such a supervision as that of the Central Board has been so strikingly evinced that Parliament will, probably, soon be induced to place yet greater powers of control in the hands of the Board, and make the provisions of the act entirely compulsory instead of optional. It might seem wise and well to leave the unerring laws of health and disease to work out their own results, in punishing those who neglect the necessary conditions by which alone health can be maintained where men congregate together; but as the epidemics engendered by such neglect cannot be confined to those who are their responsible producers, the legislature, on behalf of society at large, has the right to interfere. The application of the act to Worcester has been productive of immediate results that are sufficiently curious; but its importance, as regards the future welfare of the city, cannot be overrated, and on that account, much more than for any present turmoil, which, in “the whirligig of time,” will subside and be forgotten, the subject claims a special notice here. Worcester, more than most English towns, needed the application of such a measure to its internal economy. Its fair exterior, and the outward cleanliness of its principal streets, are but the deceitful masks of hidden insalubrities. Surrounded by hills, which attract the moisture and screen it from the healthful breezes that would drive away miasma, its atmosphere is too constantly damp and relaxing in summer, and in winter the fogs, rising from the stream and the undrained soil, lie long upon its dwellings. The river, which flows through it, fortunately keeps up a constant current of air, but epidemics always follow the course of rivers. Though apparently well situated for drainage, the greater part of the city is ill-circumstanced in this respect, for the southern and western half, at least, is built on a cold marl, which retains the soakings of the surface as a sponge. These are natural reasons which, it might be supposed, would have suggested to the inhabitants the most careful attention to drainage and cleanliness; yet it is a fact, that scarcely a street in the whole city is supplied with a sufficient drain, and that it contains more open cesspits, prolific of noisome smells and active disease, than any town of equal size in the kingdom.