Mr. Slaney contrasts the two classes or kinds of inhabitants of the same city, in the one of which the annual mortality is but two, and in the other four per cent. “We shall find the rate of mortality one great criterion of comfort, therefore, of contentment, of good conduct, of moral habits, of intelligence, docility, usefulness and value.”
“In the one case we shall find a population having little to complain of, ready to attend to advice, having had time to learn and to think, having experience from lengthened life, and being valuable subjects, docile and industrious, possessing their chief safe-guard against tumults or disorders, ‘the hope of improving their condition.’ In the other will be found a body, consisting in a great measure of the young, who cannot repay their support; a large proportion of the rest will be inexperienced, untaught, untried, having had no time to learn or to think. All will be more or less reckless, and hard in mind and conduct; they have been formed by the cautious course of circumstances around them; poison to the mind, to the body, has been the course of their only education. Their maxim will be the heathen maxim of old, ‘Eat and drink, to-morrow we die;’ forced by their necessities to labor, experience and wisdom will be wanting; they will not husband their wages, but seek for excitement in intemperance, or low sensual indulgences; their consumption of spirits will be ten times that of the happier class. The gratification of their animal passions will be their chief object; illicit connections will be formed; early ill assorted marriages will take place without any chance of provision for offspring; there will arise multitudes of sickly and neglected children, pressing into the place of those early victims just departed, and to be cut off by the same melancholy process; and thus the scene revolves. This class will eagerly join in mobs or disturbances, partly for the sake of excitement, and because they have not that security for good conduct—the hope of improving their condition.”
Dr. Lyon Playfair, one of the commissioners, in his report on the large town in Lancashire, remarks: “The tendency to crime is increased by the comparatively few old and experienced men left to counteract the haste and inexperience of youth. In the recent mobs in Lancashire, the great majority of the rioters were found to consist of persons just emerging from boyhood; the absence of elderly persons among them was a matter of common remark. Mr. Combe has observed, that the comparative paucity of aged and cautious persons is the cause of the inconsiderate and turbulent movements in America. The obstacles in the spread of education are, also, connected with these causes.”
Dr. Playfair said previously, “The facts exhibited in the preceding sections, will, I apprehend, convincingly show, that a crowded and unhealthy district, with all its inevitable accompaniments of low morals and low intelligence—where the condition of human beings is scarcely above that of animals—where appetite and instinct occupy the place of the higher feelings—where the lowest means of support encourage the most improvident and early marriages,—is not the place where we shall find a diminishing or even stationary population. For the early unions there, are followed by early offspring; and although more than half that offspring may be swept away by disease during early infancy, yet nearly a third of it will grow up, in spite of all the surrounding evils, to follow in the steps of their parents, and in their turn to continue a race ignorant, miserable and immoral as themselves.” In a note, Dr. Playfair makes the following estimate. “If we suppose a district of 50,000 inhabitants, with births as 1 in 22, and deaths as 1 in 33—a ratio not actually as unfavorable as that of Holme—a little calculation will show that, by the end of twelve years, the population will have swollen it to nearly 60,000!”
Sameness of the Causes of Crime and of Disease.—Dr. Lyon Playfair, in the report already referred to, says expressly: “All the experience acquired during this inquiry, points out that one immediate effect of the operation of morbific causes, even when not present in sufficient intensity to produce direct disease, is to create an appetite for vicious indulgences. It is too common a mistake to transpose the effect for the cause, and to ascribe the disease to the indulgence of those passions, which, in the first place, were created by the low sanatory state of the district.”
To the same purport are the pointed conclusions of Mr. Slaney. He had just been describing the low class of dwellings of the poor and the wretched, and the self-interest of small capitalists to prefer the erection of these to ones of a better description. He goes on to say:
“I have endeavored to describe some of the evils arising from the want of proper sanatory regulations in many of these crowded and neglected places. They may be summed up as follows:
“1st. Shortening the duration of the lives of the community.
“2nd. Disease, suffering and inability to work on the part of many who survive—the cause of great cost to the country.
“3d. Crimes, theft, and the loss of property, which the police constantly point out as arising from these neglected classes.
“4th. Riots, disturbances and drunkenness, which may generally be traced to the same class of persons, often to the same place.
“5th. Great injury to the education of the poor, which is constantly neutralized in its good effects by the neglect and evils they see around them. The same observation applies to the inestimable advantages of religion and of attendance on religious worship.
“6th. Great discontent in some, and sluggish apathy in others, producing recklessness of conduct, indifference, and want of attachment to the institutions of our country.
“7th. The loss in the humbler classes of the cheapest, best and most enduring pleasures, viz., those arising from the kindly influence of the domestic relations between husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters—this pure source of happiness derived from mutual kindness, attachment and good offices—is, amid the hardening and disgusting scenes described, almost destroyed.
“Amid such scenes, the children become hardened, careless of cleanliness, unused to order, and all the benefits derived from the best education which may be given, is destroyed by the constant evil examples they see around their homes. This is especially the case with the female sex, who, if early tainted by the disgusting scenes existing in the places described, and by the want of all decency and self-respect there exhibited, become at a future day, the nursing mothers of vice and wretchedness, instead of inculcating the household virtues.”
The sameness of the causes of diseases and of crime, are clearly indicated by the Rev. Mr. Clay in his report in the borough of Preston, as where he says:—
“A map of the town has been made, shaded in those districts which are ill ventilated, drained and cleaned; the increased depth of tint indicating a proportionate degree of dirtiness, &c. The number of deaths in the respective streets is also given, every blue spot representing a death from fever or epidemic disease, and the red spots showing the frequency of death from other disorders. The residences of persons charged with offences during the last year are also indicated, and the whole tends to show, that dirt, disease and crime are concurrent.”
Overcrowding and Defective Ventilation.—Dr. Southwood Smith, in his evidence before the commissioners for “Inquiring into the state of large towns and populous districts,” adduces the following painful, but yet instructive observations. We reproduce them here, not merely as a warning against a remote, or even a threatened evil, but with the hope of stimulating our fellow-citizens to the adoption of such measures as shall eradicate similar nuisances too near their own doors.