If the possible mischief to be wrought by epidemic Cholera lay in some fixed inflexible fate, whatever opinion or knowledge I might hold on the subject of its return, silence would be better than speech; and I could gladly refrain from vexing the public ear by gloomy forebodings of an inevitable future.
But from this supposition the case differs diametrically: and the people of England are not like timid cattle, capable, only when blindfold, of confronting danger. It belongs to their race—it belongs to their dignity of manhood, to take deliberate cognisance of their foes, and not lightly to cede the victory. A people that has fought the greatest battles—not of arms alone, but of genius and skilful toil, is little likely to be scared at the necessity of meeting large danger by appropriate devices of science. A people that has inaugurated railways—that has spanned the Menai Strait and reared the Crystal Palace, can hardly fear the enterprise of draining poison from its infected towns. A people that has freed its foreign slaves at twenty millions’ ransom, will never let its home population perish, for cheapness sake, in the ignominious ferment of their filth.
Therefore, gentlemen, advisedly I state the danger as it seems to me. England has again become subject to a plague, the recurrence of which—or the duration—or the malignity, no human being can predict.
But, if I state the danger, so likewise, to the best of my belief, I state the remedy and defence. Colossal statistics concur with the results of detailed inspection, to refer this disease, in common with many others that scourge our population, distinctly and infallibly, to the working of local causes—of causes susceptible of removal—of causes which it devolves on our Legislature to remove.
The exemption we seek is worth a heavy purchase. My thoughts turn involuntarily to the epidemics of former centuries, to their frequent returns and immense fatality. I reflect on the Plague, and how it influenced the average death-rate of London; how in 1593 it doubled it, in 1603 trebled it, in 1625 quadrupled it: and how (after a less considerable visitation in 1636) it actually multiplied the mortality sevenfold in the tremendous epidemic of ‘65. The ravages of that pestilence are best appreciated in the fact, that we esteem the Great Fire of London a cheap equivalent for their arrest; looking to that eventful conflagration of the metropolis with gratitude, rather than horror, because of the mightier evils that were extinguished with its flames.
To so frightful a development as this, Cholera, by many degrees, has not attained; but, ignorant as we are of its laws and resources, we dare not surmise, at any renewed invasion, what increment of severity it may have won. In the simple fact, that our country has again become subject to pestilential epidemics, there lies an amount of threat only to be measured by those who are conversant, by history or experience, with the possible developments of such disease.
Therefore, gentlemen, having the deepest assurance that these unexplored possibilities of evil may be foreclosed by appropriate means, I should ill deserve your confidence if I shrank from setting before you—however ungracious the task—my deliberate estimate of the peril.
It pertains to my local office to tell you of local cures; and this I have sought to do. I have suggested that, by active superintendence of all houses within your jurisdiction, there may be suppressed in detail those several causes of the disease which arise in individual neglect; that, by elaborate care as to the cleanliness of pavements, markets, docks, and sewers, something may be done towards the mitigation of more general causes; that, by a well-organised system of medical visitation, very much may be effected towards encountering attacks of the disease, while still amenable to treatment:—that these, with similar precautions, are therefore to be recommended.
And not for a moment would I seem to depreciate such measures, palliative only, and partial though they be. By their judicious application, from Aldgate to the Temple, life may possibly be saved to some hundreds; to children that are fondly loved, to parents that are the stay of numbers.
But against the full significance of any epidemic, I am bound to tell you that these are but poor substitutes for protection. To render them effectual, even in their narrow sphere of operation, there must be great vigilance and great expenditure; a weary vigilance and a disproportionate expenditure, because chiefly given to defeat in detail what should have been prevented in principle. And be done what may, in this palliative spirit, the sources of the disease are substantially unstayed: for the faults, to which its metropolitan prevalence is due, consist not simply in a number of individual mismanagements, but include a common and radical mal-construction as their chief.