If the families and dependants of these persons are taken into the amount, a population of 12,000 souls at least derive their support from the smelting establishments. The consequences which would result from depriving so great a number of persons of the means of subsistence may be more easily conceived than described. These estimates refer only to the mere direct expenditure of the smelting works and their immediate dependants—the consequences of the stoppage of these works to the immense number of persons employed in the mines in Cornwall—between 50 and 60,000 souls—would be completely ruinous.
These considerations it might be supposed are sufficiently apalling to deter those who are engaged in the present measures carrying on against one of the principal smelting companies by prosecution: an object which is likely to be productive of consequences so destructive of the welfare of thousands, in the annihilation of a trade of the utmost general importance to the country, whether as relating to its internal or external affairs, to its manufactories, its colonies, or its ships: a trade in which upwards of two millions of pounds sterling are embarked. That it ever should enter into the mind of any human being to prosecute measures which could by any possibility lead to consequences so disastrous, is almost inconceivable, and the only excuse that can possibly be offered for them (if excuse it can be called) is, that they are so entirely occupied by the consideration of their personal convenience and fancied interest, as to be incapable of forming a just conception of the momentous business they have undertaken.
[549]. Si homme fait Candells deins un vill, per que il cause un noysom sent al inhabitants, uncore ceo nest ascun nusans, car le needfulness de eux dispensera ove le noisomness del smell. 2 Rolle Abr. 139.
[550]. A fine for every beast slaughtered within the walls of Exeter was held good under a bye-law. Cowp. R. 269.
[551]. By this act, 57 Geo. 3, c. 22, §. 64, it is enacted that if any person shall throw, or suffer to be thrown or remain, any ashes, dust, dirt, rubbish, offal, dung, soil, blood, or other filth, or shall kill, slaughter, scald, dress, or cut up any beast, &c. in or near any street, (within the act) as that any blood or filth shall run or flow over the pavements, such person, on conviction before any justice of the peace, shall forfeit and pay not less than forty shillings, or more than five pounds for each offence.
[552]. We are very sorry to instance the state of Covent Garden Market as an exception to the rule of neatness and cleanliness, for which the English have been celebrated; the quantity of putrescent vegetables allowed to accumulate there is as disgraceful to the persons who have the control of the market as it is disgusting to those who have occasion to resort to, or even pass by it. Dr. Rogers relates that a very malignant fever having appeared at Wadham college in Oxford, and carried off a considerable number of people, and that the physicians ascribed it to the putrefaction of a considerable heap of cabbages, which had been thrown from the neighbouring gardens, on a spot of ground contiguous to the college.
[553]. Dr. Garthshore has observed that women, during the period of utero-gestation, on account of the increased irritability of the system at that period, are frequently affected by odours, that at any other time would not have produced the slightest impression; and this experienced practitioner was of opinion that the dangerous convulsions which sometimes seize the patient towards the end of a tedious and difficult labour, may arise from the long continued inspiration of the air of a close and unventilated chamber crowded with attendants and friends.
This observation suggests to us another circumstance which, though it has never, we believe, been legally treated as a nuisance, well deserves to be so considered; we allude to the public exposure of disgusting objects for the purpose of exciting charity. The vagrant laws are evidently ineffective for the purpose of removing them, nor has the Society for the Suppression of Mendicity been much more successful; those who have observed the pertinacity with which some sturdy vagrants persecute pregnant females, obtruding on their view some ulcerous sore, stump, or deformity, will agree in the necessity of some more vigorous measures than have been yet employed for the abatement of this species of nuisance.
[554]. The Author well remembers being sent for on a professional visit to the great copper works at Hayle, in Cornwall, and being told by a man, who had been a smelter for more than half a century, that the occupation was remarkably healthy, and that those who were engaged in it escaped the ordinary maladies of the season and country; “The smoke,” said he, “kills all disorders, especially Fevers.” This anecdote is at least sufficient to shew the force of their prejudice.
[555]. The increase of the metropolis may be deemed a medical, though it cannot be restrained as a legal nuisance; this has been long felt but is still without remedy. In 1580 Queen Elizabeth, by proclamation, prohibited new buildings within three miles of the city of London, and commanded the Lord Mayor and officers to regulate the number of inmates in each house, which had become excessive. 2 Stowe’s London, 436. About this time it was made matter of complaint that “Moorfields, which formerly the citizens used for their health and pleasure to walk in and take the air, began now to be enclosed, to the hinderance of these healthful and useful walkings.” The limits of a Sabbath-days journey will not afford the modern citizen a breathing place; what effect this privation may have on the moral as well as physical state of the poorer inhabitants of this overgrown capital we will not attempt to discuss, and as the existing evil is without remedy, we will content ourselves with a hope that some means may be found to prevent its increase. An act of parliament limits the distance from the new road within which no buildings may be erected; an extension of this principle to all other roads five miles round London (exceptis excipiendis) and the imposition of double taxes on all houses to be erected after a certain date, within a limited circuit, (with a decreasing ratio as the radius increases) might possibly obviate the evil without very materially interfering with the value of property. The capital is metaphorically called the heart of the empire; we wish to provide it with sufficient lungs that it may circulate more florid and healthy blood to the extremities.