But merely again to declare—
“That it shall be the duty of every local authority entrusted with the laws relating to public health and local government to put in force the powers with which they are invested so as to secure the proper sanitary condition of all premises within the area under their control”—was futile, considering that the authorities in question had steadily ignored the same direction, made nineteen years previously, in the Act of 1866.
Lord Salisbury wound up his speech with the following abnegation of Parliamentary power:—
“We must not imagine that it is anything we can do in this House, or in the House of Commons, that will remove all these evils. It must be done by that stirring up of public opinion which these investigations cause; it is to this that we must look for any real reform, it must be from the people themselves, from the owners, builders, and occupiers, when their attention is drawn to the enormous evils which past negligence has caused, it is from them that the cure of the sanitary evils which have so largely increased the death-rate must come.”
Considering, however, the accumulated mass of evidence which had shown beyond all question that it was the owners and builders who were mainly responsible for those “enormous evils,” and who were still hard at work adding to them and perpetuating them, it was rather hopeless to expect “the cure of the sanitary evils” to come from that quarter.
Unfortunately two general elections, and the heated discussion of great political questions, threw even these great health questions into the background, and not so much immediate benefit as was to be hoped followed the inquiry of the Royal Commissioners.
It is an awful handicap to the welfare of a community, and of a nation, when those who should take a principal share in the duty of raising the physical, social, and moral condition of the people over whom they can exercise influence, and who are more or less under their control, not alone stand idly aside, but absolutely exploit the misery and helplessness and ignorance of masses of the people.
The Imperial Government may make most excellent laws, but the physical and sanitary welfare of the people cannot be secured by a local governing authority alone, nor their moral and religious welfare by the Churches alone.
There is a great sphere of life where those who stand in the relation of land-owners or house-owners to tenants could exercise an enormous influence for good, and where nobody else could exercise it so effectually or so easily.