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some years raised to the priesthood. And the natives being very liberal and well disposed, would no doubt come forward to support such an establishment; though poor as they are, and already supporting their priests, for the most part it is more than they could do to set it on foot. But until something of this kind is done, there is no prospect of providing the country with a sufficient number of priests. Even if they could be sent out in sufficient numbers from France or Italy, they could never altogether supply the place of priests and catechists who were familiar with the language and manners of the country.

It is indeed a humbling thought to those who are Catholics, as well as Englishmen, to see the mischief their country has done to the true religion. Our possessions in different parts of the world are far larger than those of any other kingdom, but wherever we have carried our arms, we have introduced not virtue and truth, but infidelity and fresh vices, with which our colonists have degraded themselves below the uncivilized savages whom they have conquered. The spectacle which the natives of India, for instance, has seen, is of a powerful nation breaking in upon them, draining them of their wealth, and while they reproved or even punished them for their vice and immorality, far outstripping them in the same excesses. They see their conquerors professing a religion which has not the power to keep them even outwardly moral and decorous in their conduct. And it is to this religion which Englishmen in these countries, if one may judge by their lives, seem themselves to scorn at, that the poor natives are invited. Tens or indeed hundreds of thousands of pounds are annually poured out of this country, by numerous Protestant societies, to spread their pernicious errors throughout the English colonies, and to distract the poor heathens by the sight of so many bodies of "christians," all wrangling and disagreeing among themselves. Surely, if anything could make them feel sure that the christian religion was not right, it would be seeing that its professors all differed from one another in their creed, and were only alike in their disregard of its precepts. In the mean time it is melancholy to think, that the true religion does not come to them at all from us. In bringing these poor British subjects to the Catholic faith, the English nation itself takes no part. It is foreign nations that spend their money and their lives, in spreading the true religion in our colonies. We earnestly trust that this will not continue, but that our national spirit will be roused, so as not to allow all the good to be done by other nations, while the evil is from us. We would not for the very love of our country, that the true religion should have been spread in our possession by other nations, and but vice and false religion by her.

If having invited and eagerly embraced the true religion when first they heard of it, and immediately after laying down their lives for it-if suffering a long persecution, and adhering throughout steadfastly to their faith, though left for the most part without priests to exhort and sustain them, to instruct them, and minister the Sacraments to them-if being still ready to receive the truth when it is fairly put before them, and being docile and tractable in following the instructions of their priests if the circumstance of their own native heathenism being ready to fall, with nothing to take its place but worldliness and infidelity, -if showing a real sense of what is right and true, by rejecting all the attempts of Protestantism as they have done hitherto, while the number of converts to the true church daily increases, and are making petitions to God and man that priests may be sent them, for whom they have long since built churches and houses, and promise to do their best in supporting them if all these circumstances can render a country interesting, and give it a claim to the sympathies and assistance of its wealthier and more fortunate fellow men, the poor natives of Ceylon have a right to be attended to.

ART. V.-1.-Report on the Sanatory Condition of the Labouring Population.

2. An Act for Encouraging the Establishment of Public Baths and Washhouses.

3. The 11 & 12 Vict., entitled, "An Act for promoting the Public Health."

NO long as a nation continues to be only moderately

over rural districts, they are obviously less exposed to those causes of disease, which, under different circumstances, affect their vigour and impair their health. Pure air they at least have in abundance; the limpid stream, or sparkling well, supplies them with a superfluity of water, and as their occupations are generally under the open sky, God supplies them with the light which human legislation too frequently denies.

But a nation never did, nor, indeed, ever can, long limit itself to detached habitations. The Indians have their craals, and the Arabs their congregated tents. Man is essentially a gregarious animal, and, from the very first, the attracting powers which bind him to his kind, have ever exerted a dominant influence. This attraction, which we may presume was less powerful in very early ages, augments in force as time goes on; the necessity of mutual defence is strongly felt, and ten thousand relations of partly civilized life demand a close vicinity. So probably arose the walled towns of Britain, so the innumerable villages which stud its surface, till now we have scarce any where to deal with a rural people of Arcadian times, but with one in which the vast masses of a swarming population have, from the flaunting metropolis to the meanest village, established themselves in close and intimate proximity.

We pass over all the intermediate stages, we leave Defoe and others to report how much the sweating sickness of 1485, or the plague of 1665, was really dependant on the then miserably polluted state of London, and how far au appreciation of the then evil should not have called on the authorities of a more enlightened age to lend themselves heart and soul to its removal; and we proceed to discuss, in a brief space, the existing position of such a question, most unhappily till lately an object of arduous

contest.

It was a very long time indeed ere men began to have the least suspicion that their own health, or that of their wives, or children, or servants, was in the least dependant on the filthy cesspools, or the want of ventilation, and the bad drainage of their habitations. True, indeed, it is, that they saw their poor offspring pining before their eyes, and themselves weak, "upset," "unfit for business," and indisposed in a thousand different ways. A trip to Brighton was the result, from which they speedily returned in unconscious innocence to meet again evils of whose existence they had no idea. Ignorance induced those evils; that ignorance still prevails.

There were, however, some people in the world who saw the enormous mischief, more especially among the poor, which resulted from the culpable neglect of sanatory measures. In the year 1838, three physicians, from their habits intimately acquainted with the condition of the metropolis, addressed letters to the Poor-Law Commissioners, strongly urging on their attention the existence of many scandalous nuisances, inimical alike to health, to morals, and to life, many of which might, in their opinion, be remedied by proper legislation.

The hint thus happily given, at once gained attention; the House of Lords, in 1839, voted an address to her Majesty, praying for an inquiry, which she was graciously pleased to order, and the report heading this article was the result, while out of it sprung, after various delays contingent on different changes in the ministry, the important act passed in the last session of parliament.

We shall hereafter notice the nature of its provisions; at present, we shall only consider the broad principle on which it is based, and the effect which it produced on the minds of those who, as the members of local municipal boards, or corporations, thought their mission affected by the measure.

No sooner had the Health of Towns Bill of the session of 1847 been laid on the table of Parliament, than it raised up a perfect hurricane of hostility. Vested interests were said to be invaded; municipal government, the grand palladium of England's liberties, would no longer have existence when controlled by a central and despotic commission; and the supposed interests of petty vestries, or worn-out corporations, were held to preponderate in the scales against the health, the comfort, and the cleanliness of an entire nation.

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The metropolis took the lead in this vehement opposition. The effete corporation of the city required that government should withdraw it from the operation of the bill. On every side some pursy alderman selected special nuisance as his favourite and pet. Through the stinking air of Puddle Dock, voices might be heard, defensive of all which was filthy and poisonous. Smithfield sent forth a corporation howl in anticipation of its downfall, and the bloody kennels of Whitechapel, diffusing pestilence and misery, found ready advocates in favour of the nuisance.

While a large body of the city corporations were thus urging their opposition to the measures of government, it was a curious thing to find that, between three or four centuries ago, the filthy state of what then constituted London, attracted the attention of both the inhabitants and legislature.

In the fourth year of Henry VII. a petition was presented by the inhabitants "of St. Faith's and St. Gregory's in London, near adjoining the Cathedral Church of St. Paul's," setting forth that "the parishes aforesaid" were greatly "annoyed and distempered by corrupt airs engendered in the said parishes, by occasion of blood and other fouler things, by reason of the slaughter of beasts...... had and done in the butchery of St. Nicholas,......and whereas sundry complaints have been made to the mayor and aldermen during sixteen years, and no remedy found," ......they pray the king, "out of his abundant grace," to succour "his poor subjects in this behalf, considering that in few noble towns or cities, or none within Christendom.......the common slaughter of beasts should"......be within "the walls of the same."

......

Such is the substance of the petition in the preamble of the act. The legislative result accords:

"No butcher or his servant is to slay any beast within the walls of London, or any walled town in England,......under a penalty of twelve-pence for an ox or cow, and eight-pence for every other beast."

The penalty is recoverable by action of debt, half going to the informer, and half to the crown. We have not been able to find that this stringent act has been repealed, and if not, as we fully believe, it might even now, should necessity occur, partly meet the corporate selfishness which

exists.

This rather curious corporate desire to perpetuate a monopoly of filth, soon spread to the western parts of London; the large and noisy parish of St. Marylebone took up the question with great vehemence, and, associated by deputation with seven other parishes, passed resolutions of a highly condemnatory nature. Petitions from London were then presented, praying that the metropolis should be exempted from the bill; and government, with a readiness not very common, yielded to the demand. For this sundry reasons were assigned; it was insinuated in the

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