dwellings for the masses, except in the suburbs where no pressing sanitary evils exist Meanwhile, in the inferior districts above described, has resulted an increase of overcrowding — half-a-dozen families in a house — a score lodgers to a room. Nay, more than this has resulted. That state of miserable dilapidation masses, and to a greater height, such an economy can be achieved in ground-rent, the cost of outer walls, and of roofing, as to give more accommodation at the same expense as now (which happily seems probable), then the fact only needs proving, and, as before said, the competition of capital for investment will do all that can be done; but if not, the beUef that legislative coercion can make things better is a fit companion to the behef that it can fix the price of bread and the rate of wages.
Let those who are anxious to improve the health of the poor, through the indirect machinery of law, bring their zeal to bear directly upon the work to be done. Let them appeal to men's sympathies, and again to their interests. Let them prove to people of property that the making of these reforms wiU pay. Let them show that the productive powers of the labourer will be increased by bettering his health, whilst the poors' -rates will be diminished. Above all, let them demand the removal of those obstacles which existing legislation puts in the way of sanitary improvement". Their efforts thus directed will really into which these abodes of the poor are allowed to fall, is due to the absence of competition from new houses. Landlords do not find their tenants tempted awaj' by the offer of better accommodation. Repairs, being unnecessary for securing the largest amount of profit, are rot made. And the fees demanded by the surveyor, even when an additional chimney-pot is put up, supply ready excuses for doing nothing. Thus, whilst the New Building Act has caused some improvement where improvement was not greatly needed, it has caused none where it was needed, but has instead generated evils worse than those it was to remove. In fact, for a large percentage of the very horrors which our sanitary agitators are now trying to cure by law, we have to thank previous agitators of the same school!
^ Writing before the repeal of the brick-duty, the Builder says, " It is supposed that one-fourth of the cost of a dwelling which lets for 2s. 6d. or 3s. a week is caused by the expense of the title-deeds and the tax on wood and bricks used in its construction. Of course the owner of such property must be remunerated, and he therefore charges 7id. or 9d. a week to cover these burdens." Mr. C. Gatlif^ secretary to the Society for Improving the Dwellings of the 'Working Classes, describing the effect of the window-tax, says, " They are now paying upon their institution in St. Pancras the sum of £162 16s. in window-duties, or 1 per cent, per annum upon the original outlay. The average rental paid by the Society's tenants is 6s. 6(i. per week, and the window-duty deducts from this Hd. per week." — Deputation to Lord Ashley, see TiiMS. Jan. 31, 1850. Mr. W. Voller, a master-taUor, says, " I lately inserted promote progress. Whereas their efforts as now directed are either needless or injurious.
These endeavours to increase the salubrity of town-life by law, are not only open to the criticism that the natiu'al forces already at work render them unnecessaij, and to the additional criticism that some of the things strained after are impossible of legislative achievement, but it must farther be observed, that even the desiderata which acts of parliament will reach, can be so reached only through very faulty instrumentahties. It is, in this case, as in many others, the peculiarity of what are oddly styled " practical measures," that they supersede agencies which are answering well by agencies which are not likely to answer well. Here is a heavy charge of inefficiency brought against the drains, cesspools, stink-traps, &c., of England in general, and London in particular. The evidence is voluminous and conclusive, and by common consent a verdict of proven is returned. Citizens look grave and determine to petition parliament about it. Parliament promises to consider the matter; and after the usual amount of debate, says — " Let there be a Board of Health." Whereupon petitioners rub their hands, and look out for great things. They have unbounded simplicity— these good citizens. Legislation may disappoint them fifty times running, without at all shaking their faith in its efficiency. They hoped that Church abuses would be rectified by the Ecclesiastical Commission: the poor curates can say whether that hope has been reahzed. Backed by an act of parliament, the Poor-Law Commissioners were to have eradicated able-bodied pauperism: yet, vmtil checked by the recent prosperity, the poors'-rates have been rapidly rising to their old level. The New Building Act was to have given the people of London better homes; whereas, as we lately saw, one of Dr. Amott's ventilators in the chimney of the workshop, little thinking I should be called upon by Mr. Badger, our district surveyor, for a fee of 25s." — Morning Chronicle, Feb. 4, 1850.
it has made worse the homes that most wanted improving. Men were sanguine of reforming criminals by the silent system, or the separate system; hut, if we are to judge hy the disputes of their respective advocates, neither of these plans is very successful. Pauper children were to have been made into good citizens hy industrial education; from all quarters, however, come statements that a very large percentage of them get into gaol, or become prostitutes, or return to the workhouse. The measures enjoined by the Vaccination Act of 1840 were to have exterminated small-pox; yet the Eegistrar-General's reports show that the deaths from small-pox have been increasing. And thus does year after year add to those abortive schemes, of which so many have been quoted (pp. 8, 46, 288).
Yet scarcely a doubt seems to arise, respecting the competency of legislators to do what they profess. From the times when they tried to fix the value of money down to our own day, when they have but just abandoned tlie attempt to fix the price of com, statesmen have been undertaking all kinds of things, from regulating the cut of boot-toes, up to preparing people for Heaven; and have been constantly failing, or producing widely- different results from those intended. Nevertheless such inexhaustible faith have men, that, although they see this, and although they are daily hearing of imbecihties in pubhc departments— of Admiralty Boards that squander three millions a year in building bad ships and breaking them up again — of Woods and Forests Commissioners who do not even know the rental of the estates they manage — of bungling excise-chemists who commit their chiefs to losing prosecutions, for which compensation has to be made — yet government needs but to announce another plausible project, and men straightway hurrah, and throw up their caps, in the full expectation of getting all that is promised.
But the belief that Boards of Health, and the like, will never effect what is hoped, needs not whoUy rest either upon abstract considerations, or upon our experience of state-instrumentalities in general. We have one of these organizations at work, and, as far as may be at present judged, it has done anything but answer people's expectations. To condemn it, because choked sewers, and open gullv-holes, and filthy alleys remain much as they were, would, perhaps, be unreasonable, for time is needed to rectify evils so widely established. But there is one test by which we may fairly estimate its efficiency, viz., its conduct before and during the late pestilence. It had more than a year's notice that the cholera was on its way here. There were two whole sessions of parhament intervening between the time when a second invasion from that disease was foreseen and the time when the mortality was highest. The Board of Health had, therefore, fiiU opportunity to put forth its powers, and to get greater powers if it wanted them. Well, what was the first step that might have been looked for from it? Shall we not say the suppression of intramural interments? Burying the dead in the midst of the hving was manifestly hurtful; the evils attendant on the practice were universally recognised; and to put it down required little more than a simple exercise of authority. If the Board of Health believed itself possessed of authority sufficient for this, why did it not use that authority when the advent of the epidemic was rumoured? If it thought its authority not great enough (which can hardly be, remembering what it ultimately did), then why did it not obtain more?
Instead of taking either of these steps, however, it occupied itself in considering future modes of water-supply, and devising systems of sewage. Whilst the cholera was approaching, the Board of Health was cogitating over reforms, from which the most sanguine could not expect any considerable benefit for years to come. And then, when the enemy was upon us, this guardian, in which men were putting their trust, suddenly bestirred itself, and did what, for the time being, made worse the evils to be remedied. As was said by a speaker, at one of the medical meetings held during the height of the cholera, " the Commissioners of Public Health had adopted the very means Hkely to produce that complaint. Instead of taking their measures years ago, they had stirred up all sorts of abominations now. They had removed dunghills and cesspools, and added fael tenfold to the fire that existed. (Hear, hear.) Never since he could recollect had there been such accumulations of abominable odours as since the Health of Towns Commission had attempted to purify the atmosphere. (A laugh, and Hear, hear.)" At length, when, in spite of all that had been done (or, perhaps, partly in consequence of it), the mortality continued to increase, the closing of graveyards was decided upon, in the hope, as we must suppose, that the mortality would thereby be checked. As though, when there were hundreds of thousands of bodies decomposing, the ceasing to add to them would immediately produce an appreciable effect!
. If to these faots we add the further one, that, notwithstanding the directions issued for prophylactic treatment, and the system of domiciliary visits, the cholera carried off a greater number than before, we have some reason for thinking that this sanitary guardianship did no good, hut, it may be, even harm.
Should it be said that the Board of Health is badly constituted, or has not sufficient power, and that had a better organization been given to it we should have seen different results, the reply is, that the almost invariable occurrence of some such fatal hitch is one of the reasons for condemning these interferences. There is always some provoking if iu the way. If the established clergy were what they should be, a statechurch might do some good. If parish relief were judiciously administered, a poor-law would not be so bad a thing. And if "a sanitary organization could be made to do just what it is intended to do, something might be said in its favour.
Even could state-agency compass for our towns the most perfect salubrity, it would be in the end better to remain as we are, rather than obtain such a benefit by such means. It is quite possible to give too much even for a great desideratum. However valuable good bodily health may be, it is very' dearly.
purchased when mental health goes in exchange. Whoso thinks that government can supply sanitary advantages for nothing, or at the cost of more taxes only, is woefizlly mistaken. They must be paid for with character as well as with taxes. A full equivalent must be given in other coin than gold, and even more than an equivalent.
Let it be again remembered that men cannot make force. All they can do is to avail themselves of force already existing, and employ it for working out this or that purpose. They cannot increase it; they cannot get from it more than its specific effect; and as much as they expend of it for doing one thing, must they lack of it for doing other things. Thus it is now becoming a received doctrine, that what we call chemical affinity, heat, light, electricity, magnetism, and motion, are aU manifestations of the same primordial force — that they are severally convertible into each other — and, as a corollary, that it is impossible to obtain in any one form of this force more than its equivalent in the previous form. Now this is equally true of the agencies acting in society. It is quite possible to divert the power at present working out one result, to the working out of some other resrdt. You may transform one kind of influence into another kind. But you cannot make more of it, and you cannot have it for nothing. You cannot, by legislative manoeuvring, get increased ability to achieve a desired object, except at the expense of something else. Just as much better as this particular thing is done, so much worse must another tiling be done.
Or, changing the illustration, and regarding society as an organism, we may say that it is impossible artificially to use up social vitality for the more active performance of one function, without diminishing the activity with which other functions are performed. So long as society is let alone, its various organs will go on developing in due subordination to each other. If some of them are very imperfect, and make no appreciable progress towards efficiency, be sure it is because still more important organs are equally imperfect, and because the amount of vital force pervading society being limited, the rapid growth of these involves cessation of growth elsewhere. Be sure, also, that whenever there arises a special necessity for the better performance of any one fiinction, or for the estabhshment of some new function, nature will respond. Instance in proof of this, the increase of particular manufacturing towns and sea-ports, or the formation of incorporated companies. Is there a rising demand for some commodity of general consumption? Immediately the organ secreting that commodity becomes more active, absorbs more people, begins to enlarge, and secretes in greater abundance. Instrumentalities for the fulfilment of other social requirements — for the supply of religious culture, education, and so forth, are similarly provided: the less needful being postponed to the more needful; just as the several parts of the embryo are developed in the order of their subservience to Ufe. To interfere with this process by producing premature development in any particular direction is inevitably to disturb the due balance of organization, by causing somewhere else a corresponding atrophy. Let it never be forgotten that at any given time the amount of a society's vital force is fixed. Dependent as is that vital force upon the degree of adaptation that has taken place — upon the extent to which men have acquired fitness for a co-operative life — upon the efficiency with which they can combine as elements of the social organism, we may be quite certain that, whilst their characters remain constant, nothing can increase its total quantity. We may be also certain that this total quantity can produce only its exact equivalent of results; and that no legislators can get more from it; although by wasting it they may, and always do, get less.
Already, in treating of Poor-Laws and National Education, we have examined in detail the reaction by which these attempts at a multiplication of results are defeated. In the case of sanitary administrations, a similar reaction may be traced; showing itself, amongst other ways, in the checking of all social improvements that demand popular enterprise and perseverance. Under the natural order of things, the unfolding of an intelligent, self-helping character, must keep pace with the ameUoration of physical circumstances — the advance of the one -with the exertions put forth to achieve the other; so that in establishing arrangements conducive to robustness of body, robustness of mind must be insensibly acquired. Contrariwise, to whatever extent activity of thought and firmness of purpose are made less needful by an artificial performance of their work, to that same extent must their increase, and the dependent social improvements, be retarded.
Should proof of this be asked for, it may be found in the contrast between Enghsh energy and Continental helplessness. English engineers (Manby, Wilson, and Co.) established the first gas-works in Paris, after the failure of a French company; and many of the gas-works throughout Europe have been constructed by Englishmen. An English engineer (MiUer) introduced steam navigation on the Rhone; another Enghsh engineer (Pritchard) succeeded in ascending the Danube by steam, after the French and Germans had failed.
The first steam-boats on the Loire were built by Englishmen (Fawcett and Preston); the great suspension bridge at Pesth has been built by an EngUshman (Tiemey Clarke); and an Enghshman (VignoUes) is now building a still greater suspension bridge over the Dnieper; many continental railways have had Englishmen as consulting engineers; and in spite of the celebrated Mining College at Freyburg, several of the mineral fields along the Rhine have been opened up by Enghsh capital employing English skiU. Now why is this? Why were our coaches so superior to the dihgences and eilwagen of our neighbours? Why did our railway system develop so much faster? Why are our towns better drained, better paved, and better supplied with water? There was originally no greater mechanical aptitude, and no greater desire to progress in us than in the connate nations of northern Europe. If anything, we were comparatively deficient in these respects. Early improvements in the arts of life were imported. The germs of owe silk and woollen manufactures came from abroad. The first water- works in London were erected by a Dutchman. How happens it, then, that we have now reversed the relationship? How happens it, that instead of being dependent on continental skill und enterprise, our skill and enterprise are at a premium on the Continent? Manifestly the change is due to difierence of discipline. Having been left in a greater degree than others to manage their own affairs, the English people have become self-helping, and have acquired great practical ability. Whilst conversely that comparative helplessness of the patemaUy-govemed nations of Europe, illustrated in the above facts, and commented upon by Laing, in his " Notes of a Traveller," and by other observers, is a natural result of the state-superintendence policy — is the reaction attendant on the action of official mechanisms— is the atrophy corresponding to some artificial hypertrophy.
One apparent difficulty accompanying the doctrine now contended for remains to be noticed. If sanitary administration by the state be wrong, because it implies a deduction from the citizen's property greater than is needful for maintaining his rights, then is sanitary administration by municipal authorities wrong also for the same reason. Be it by general government or by local government, the levying of compulsory rates for drainage, and for paving and lighting, is inadmissible, as indirectly making legislative protection more costly than necessary, or, in other words, turning it into aggression (p. 278); and if so, it foUows that neither the past, present, nor proposed methods of securing the health of towns are equitable.
This seems an awkward conclusion; nevertheless, as deducible from our general principle, we have no alternative but to take to it. How streets and courts are rightly to be kept in order remains to be considered. Kespecting sewage there would be no difficulty. Houses might readily be drained on the same mercantile principle that they are now supplied ■vrith water. It is highly probahle that in the hands of a private company the resulting manure would not only pay the cost of collection, but would yield a considerable profit. But if not, the return on the invested capital would be made up by charges to those whose houses were drained: the alternative of having their connections with the main sewer stopped, being as good a security for payment as the analogous ones possessed by water and gas companies. Paving and lighting would properly fall to the management of house-owners. Were there no public provision for such conveniences, house-owners would qidckly find it their interest to furnish them. Some speculative building society having set the example of improvement in this direction, competition would do the rest. DweUings without proper footway before them, and with no lamps to show the tenants to their doors, would stand empty, when better accommodation was offered. And good paving and lighting having thus become essential, landlords would combine for the more economical supply of them.
To the objection that the perversity of individual landlords and the desire of others to take unfair advantage of the rest, would render such an arrangement impracticable, the reply is that in new suburban streets not yet taken to by the authorities such an arrangement is, to a considerable extent, already carried out, and would be much better carried out but for the consciousness that it is merely temporary. Moreover, no adverse inference could be drawn, were it even shown that for the present such an arrangement is impracticable. So, also, was personal freedom once. So once was representative government, and is stiU with many nations. As repeatedly pointed out, the practicability of recognising men's rights is proportionate to the degree in which men have become moral. That an organization dictated by the law of eq^ual freedom cannot yet be fully reaUzed is no proof of its imperfection: is proof only of our imperfection. And as by diminishing this, the process of adaptation has already fitted us for institutions which were once too good for us, so will it go on to fit us for others that may be too good for us now.
We find, then, that besides being at variance with the moral law, and besides involving absurdities, the dogma that it is the duty of the state to protect the health of its subjects may be successfully combated on grounds of policy. It turns out, upon examination, to be near akin to the older dogma that it is the duty of the state to provide for the spiritual welfare of its subjects — must, if consistently followed out, necessitate a co-extensive organization — and must, for aught there appears to the contrary, produce analogous results. Of the sufferings consequent upon imrestrained empuicism, it may safely be said that they are not so great as is represented; and that in as far as they do exist, they are amongst the penalties nature has attached to ignorance or imbecility, and which cannot be dissociated firom it without ultimately entaiUng much greater sufferings. The anxiety to improve by legislative measures the salubrity of our towns, is deprecated on the ground that natural causes insure the continutince of progress — insure further sanitary reforms, just as they insure advancement in the arts of life, the development of manufactures and commerce, and the spread of education. Moreover, it appears that such of these measures as are directed to the improvement of habitations, aim at what laws either cannot do, or what is being done much better without them; and to the rest it is objected, that they are not likely to accomphsh the proposed end — a belief founded upon the results of all analogous legislation, and confirmed by the little experience we have at present had of sanitary legislation itself. Further it is argued that even could the hoped-for advantages be fully realized they would be purchased at too great a cost; seeing that they could be obtained only by an equivalent retardation iu some still more important department of social progress.
CHAPTER XXIX.
So constandy have the ideas currency and government been associated — so "universal has heen the control exercised by lawgivers over monetary systems — and so completely have men come to regard this control as a matter of course, that scarcely any one seems to inquire what would result were it abolished. Perhaps in no case is the necessity of state- superintendence so generally assumed; and in no case will the denial of that necessity cause so much surprise. Yet must the denial be made.
That laws interfering with currency cannot be enacted without a reverssJ of state-duty is obvious; for to either forbid the issue or enforce the receipt of certain notes or coin in return for other things, is to infringe the right of exchange — is to prevent men making exchanges which they otherwise would have made, or to oblige them to make exchanges which they otherwise would not have made — is, therefore, to break the law of equal freedom in their persons (Chap. XXIII.). If there be truth in our general principle, it must be impolitic as well as wrong to do this. Nor will those who infer as much be deceived; for it may be shown that all such dictation is not only needless, but necessarily injurious.
The monetary arrangements of any community are ultimately dependent, like most of its other arrangements, on the morality of its members. Amongst a people altogether dis-.
honest, every mercantile transaction must he effected in coin or goods; for promises to pay cannot circulate at all, Tvhere, by the hypothesis, there is no probability that they will be redeemed. Conversely, amongst perfectly honest people paper alone will form the circulating medium; seeing that as no one of such -will give promises to pay more than his assets will cover, there can exist no hesitation to receive promises to pay in all cases; and metallic money -will be needless, save in nominal amount to supply a measure of value. Manifestly, therefore, during any intermediate state, in which men are neither altogether dishonest nor altogether honest, a mixed currency -will exist; and the ratio of paper to coin will vary with the degree of trust individuals can place in each other. There seems no evading this conclusion. The greater the prevalence of fraud, the greater will be the number of transactions in which the seller will part with his goods only for an equivalent of intrinsic value; that is, the greater will be the number of transactions in which coin is required, and the more will the metaUic currency preponderate. On the other hand, the more generally men find each other trustworthy, the more frequently will they take payment in notes, bills of exchange, and checks; the fewer wiU be the cases in which gold and silver are called for, and the smaller will be the quantity of gold and silver in circulation.
Thus, self-regulating as is a currency when let alone, laws cannot improve its arrangements, although they may, and continually do, derange them. That the state should compel every one who has given promises to pay, be he merchant, private banker, or shareholder in a joint-stock bank, duly to discharge the responsibilities he has incurred, is very true. To do this, however, is merely to maintain men's rights — to administer justice; and therefore comes within the state's normal function. But to do more than this — to restrict issues, or forbid notes below a certain denomination, is no less injurious than inequitable. For, limiting the paper in circulation to an amount smaller than it would otherwise reach, inevitably necessitates 398 CUERENCY, POSTAL ARRANGEMENTS, ETC.
a corresponding increase of coin; and as coin is locked-up capital, on which the nation gets no interest, a needless increase of it is equivalent to an additional tax equal to the additional interest lost.