Sumry Port - 15. Caef. 1857.

THE REGISTRAR-GENERAL has just published the quarterly return of marriages, births, and deaths, for the three months ending June 30 of the present year. These returns deserve careful examination, as it is by bold statement of imaginary facts that many of the modern Whig measures gain support; while the majority of mankind is but too willing to do as Lord PALMERSTON bids them, and "take upon trust" such statements, however reckless and untrue, rather than take the trouble to examine and analyse the facts.

66

Mr. CowPER, in support of the vote for the Board of Health on July 23 last, said that on comparing the mortality in 19 towns-before the works of drainage were commenced and after they were completed, they found that the number of deaths had decreased from 28 in 1000 to 20 in 1000." "The majority of the towns where the Public Health Act had been applied, were most thankful for the benefits conferred by the act.' It will presently be seen that the allegations here made and implied, are directly the reverse of what an examination of the REGISTRARGENERAL'S Returns shows to be the true state of the facts.

66 'Is

Again, when, in 1855, it was sought to fix the Board of Health, perpetually, and with increased powers, on the country, and evidence was attempted to be got up in support of this object, before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, Dr. FARR, of the REGISTRAR-GENERAL'S Office, and who is understood to be the author of the "Reports" which pass under the REGISTRARGENERAL'S name, was ostentatiously examined. Among other assertions, being asked:-"Is the mortality affected by the density of the population ?" he replied:-" It is" (Q. 1546). there not a constant tendency, in a country like this, to an increase in the rate of mortality? There is, unless it is counteracted, as it might be. The town population of Great Britain is now above 10,000,000; and the mortality is greater in proportion to the whole population than it was in 1821 or 1831" (Q. 1547). Again: "The rate of mortality would vary according to the magnitude of the town" (Q. 1575). This The was said on May 1 and May 4, 1855. reader, innocent of the devices of centralization and Whig legislation, will find it hard to believe that all these statements are directly disproved by an actual examination of the REGISTRARGENERAL'S Own returns. Yet such is the fact. On May 18, in the same year, Mr. TOULMIN SMITH, in reply to questions put to him by the same committee, says :

It has been stated to the committee that the density of population is always accompanied by an increased rate of mortality. But the facts appear to show quite the reverse, namely, that there has not been an increase in the ratio of deaths in the most dense places within the last few years, but, instead of this, a decrease. I will take Birmingham, Nottingham, Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield, Rochdale, and London City. Those seven towns I take simply as being the largest, most populous, and most trading towns in England. The facts are these: in Birmingham the rate of mortality for the seven years ending 1844 was 26 in 1000, while in the ten years ending 1851 the rate of mortality was reduced to 25 in 1000. This is a clear proof that it is not density of population alone which increases the rate of mortality, there having been in that instance a decrease of mortality, with a great in

as,

crease of population over 188.000, the population of Birmingham in 1841. In Nottingham, with 53,000 inhabitants, the rate of mortality in 1844 was 27 in 1000; in 1851 it was 26 in 1000. In Liverpool, with 223,000 inhabitants, the rate of mortality in 1844 was 33 in 1000; in 1851, including the cholera year, it had not increased, but remained stationary; and that must be looked upon in fact, a decrease. In Manchester, with 192,000 inhabitants, it was in 1844, 33 in 1000; in 1851 it was the same, notwithstanding the cholera. In Sheffield, with a population of 85,000, the rate of mortality was 27 in 1000 in 1844; in 1851 it was 25 in 1000. In Rochdale, with 60,000 inhabitants, the rate of mortality in 1844 was 25 in 1000; in 1851 it was 24 in 1000. In London city, with 57,000 inhabitants, it was 21 in 1000 in 1844; in 1851 it was 20 in 1000. The average rate of mortality of those seven towns was, in 1844, 27 in 1000; in 1851 it was 26 in 1000; showing a decrease, in the most populous towns, of one per cent.; the comparison being, moreover, instituted between an average period and a period which includes a year of cholera. The population in those places was, in 1841, 808,000. It had vastly increased before the close of the second period.

Do you object to the whole system of the returns of the Registrar-General.-Not at all; I am taking these facts from the returns of the Registrar-General. I simply want to show that, instead of the rate of mortality having increased, it is decreasing in the most densely populated parts of England.

Then there would be less necessity for the application of the act? Just so; but it has been stated to this committee that the death-rates are increasing; and that alleged fact is given as a reason for setting up this test-rate and These facts show that, in the passing Public Health Acts. largest towns, the reverse of that alleged fact is the truth. Are there not other towns in which the rate of mortality has increased?-There are; and this makes it the more remarkable. I have here a list of twenty-three towns in which the Public Health Act has been applied, and I find that there has, in these, been an increase in the average rate of mortality, of three per cent. between the years I have already named, although the population of those towns is far less than that of those just named.-(Q3. 1602-1605). This evidence concludes with the following pregnant words :—

In the largest towns in England, with no Public Health Act, there has been a decrease of mortality, while in a large number of towns, where the Public Health Act has been applied, there has, although they are much less populous, been an increase of mortality.—(Q. 1613.)

Put in a tabular form, these facts will be more readily appreciated; and they are facts of the highest permanent value:

Seven large towns, which are NOT under the Public Health Act. Deaths in the Thousand.

Birmingham......

Nottingham

Liverpool

Manchester

Sheffield

Average of 7 years, Average of 10 years,

ending 1841.

Rochdale

London City......

ending 1851.

25

26

83

33

25

24

20

Twenty-three important, but smaller towns, which ARE under

the Public Health Act.

19

27

In the only four cases in the above list where there had been a decrease in the death rate, in places under the Public Health Act, nothing had, at the date given, been done to carry out that Act there.

It is impossible to conceive anything more conclusive than the facts thus brought out. They are the reply to Mr. CowPER: they give com, plete disproof, on all points, both to his allegations and to Dr. FARR'S.

The last quarterly return of the REGISTRARGENERAL does but confirm the same results. To take the county of Surrey alone, we find that, while Epsom, which is under the Public Health Act, has increased in its deaths from 86 in the quarter ending June 1855 to 107 in the quarter ending June 1857, Guildford, which is not under the Public Health Act, has decreased from 162 in 1855 to 87 in 1857; Dorking from 76 in 1855 to 45 in 1857; and Kingston from 162 in 1855 to 108 in 1857.

The more elaborately we should examine the same return, the more conclusively would the same class of results be brought out; the individual apparent exceptions, even, only adding, on investigation, to the proof. It is thus that the true facts will always be found to confirm sound constitutional principle; while Whig legislators and functionaries are obliged to falsify the facts, so as to mislead alike Parliament and the public, in order to reach and keep hold of their own selfish ends.

Surrey Post: 22 Aust; 1857

ANOTHER exhibition of deliberate misstate. ment has, within a few days past, been made in the House of Commons; which, while made with reference to the parish of Lambeth, directly and very gravely concerns the interests of every parish in Surrey.

The Nuisances Removal Act of 1855 is an Act that every parish has an interest in. It is an Act which, thanks entirely to the exertions of the Anti-Centralization Union at the time it was under consideration, fully recognises parish action, and simplifies the means which previous Acts had devised. The latter sought to swamp Parishes in the Poor Law Unions, in order to extend the authority of the Whig Poor Law bureaucracy. The Poor Law Board has, ever since the passing of the Act of 1855, been doing all it can to thwart and misrepresent the working of that Act, so as, if possible, to get back again the centralizing interference to which its enactments gave a check.

Sir B. HALL, who got into office under the pretence of being a friend to local self-government, but who never either knew anything of,

cared anything for, the principles whose name was convenient to use as the stalking-horse to

office, is now putting himself forward as one of the most active enemies of local self-government, one of the most insolent and overbearing of those who seek to fasten upon us the Whig nostrums of centralization. The bill which

was brought in by him in 1855, as the Nuisances Removal Bill, would itself have been more mischievous than even any of its predecessors. Happily, the Anti-Centralization Union was untiring in its exertions, and succeeded in completely altering the main features of the bill, and procuring the enactment of recognitions of local responsibility and action, which alone it is that have given the Act a practical and useful character. No Act of late years has, consequently, been so widely put in action, or been found so beneficial in its results. Sir B. HALL did, indeed, contrive to get some jobbing clauses introduced (without which no Whig could exist); the consequences of one of which have very lately been strikingly seen, in preventing the application of the Act to certain nuisances that the parish of Lambeth had endeavoured to put a stop to. There are other instances, in the same bill, where the ignorance of Sir B. HALL, or his perverse determination to prevent, as far as possible, the effective action of the measure, attempted to mar what had been introduced by the Anti-Centralization Union, and had already received the direct sanction even of Lord PALMERSTON himself. This will be found proved by the evidence printed by order of the House of Commons, as taken before the Select Committee to which this bill and the Public Health Bill were referred. One of these latter instances now touches the parish of Lambeth, and every other parish in Surrey, very closely; as Sir B. HALL threatened, on the 13th inst., to introduce a bill, early next Session, in order to do some of the mischief which he was prevented doing in 1855.

The case is simple. The local authorities in the parish of Lambeth-thwarted, in consequence of a jobbing clause introduced by Sir B. HALL* into the Act of 1855, in the attempt to stop certain nuisances have now certain others brought under their attention by Sir B. HALL himself. They consider the matter, and do not feel it right to make more experiments of the same abortive nature. Hereupon, Sir BENJAMIN waxeth wroth. Armed with "papers," he hurries to the House of Commons; incontinently nudges one of his cronies to "ask him a question ;"-then rises in his majesty, and, shaking his ambrosial locks like Jupiter tonans, hurls the bolts of his dread thunder against the devoted head of Lambeth in particular, but also against the independence of every parish in England; and swears by the powers of darkness that he will take dire next Session, on Lambeth or any other parish revenge, that dares to pause before obeying the behests of a Whig functionary! He weeps over a clause that he says was in the bill of 1855, and which his siren voice did not succeed in then wheedling the House of Commons and the country to adopt. This is the clause which he holds up as the rod in pickle for all parishes.

Now it does so happen that the history of this clause is very well known. It is open to all men to study: but Sir BENJAMIN reckons upon

the apathy and ignorance of Parliament and the public. We will do our best to put him out in his reckoning.

We will take a future opportunity of entering more fully into the mischief which Sir B. HALL attempted, in this respect, in 1855, and which the Anti-Centralization Union then stopped. We will now only refer our readers to the printed "Evidence above named, and to Mr. TOULMIN SMITH's replies to Questions 473-476, 480-489 before the Committee.

But we must not now close without another remark, to which we crave special heed. The original authors of the Nuisances Removal Acts wanted to supersede the common law of the land by these crude specimens of Whig legisla tion. The Anti-Centralization Union prevented this, by procuring the insertion of the clause declaring that the Act of 1855 shall "not impair any power of abating nuisances at common law." The nuisances in Lambeth, about which Sir B. HALL raises such a bluster, are most peculiarly nuisances to which the common law applies. They are, moreover, complained of, not in Lambeth but in Westminster, in the precincts of the Houses of Parliament. It is self-evident, therefore, that it is Sir B. HALL, and nobody else, who is in fault, if those nuisances are unattacked. He is " Chief Commissioner of Public Works." any buildings under his jurisdiction are befouled by a nuisance, as here alleged, the obligation rests on him to indict for the nuisance at common law. The solicitor of his own office has even officially advised him, with reference to this very case, that 'the usual and most constitutional remedy for a public nuisance is by indictment." Sir BENJAMIN has therefore, in this case, neglected his own plain duty; and now, like all his congeners, is guilty of the contemptible Whig trick of seeking to throw off the responsibility for his own remissness, by bringing false charges against other people; and then vents his impotent rage by threatening them with the weight of his most ridiculous displeasure.

If

THOSE who are for Shams hold up their hands! Surrey Port -But the Shams have it, without waiting for a 29 au 1867 vote so, let us save this trouble.

We speak no parable, but a naked fact.

It is the theory of the British constitution that it has a Parliament, which holds the purse-strings of the nation, and acts as a jealous watch-dog over the national expenditure. There is a great deal of trouble and excitement, and there is said by the profane to be a great deal of bribery and corruption, over the election of 656 gentlemen who are to act as these jealous guardians of the public purse, the Cerberus without whose permission not a penny of Supply can be voted or spent for any purposes of Government. This theory is even carried out, and has, to the vulgar, an air of truth given to it, by the fact that an Act of Parliament is every year passed, in which the sums voted by Parliament for the use of Government are stated and enumerated, and the separate purposes to which they are to be applied are specified.

What if all this has come to be a mere sham! Such is the fact.

Every one knows how much time is spent, every session, over what is called 'Supply.' Perhaps every one does not know, though everybody ought to do so, that the title of the Act confirming the supplies is :-" An Act to apply a sum out of the consolidated fund to the service of the year and to appropriate the supplies granted in this session of Parliament." The latter half of this title involves the essence of the matter: it is the pith of the Act, without which it is unmeaning. It constitutes the declaration of the great constitutional principle, that Parliament alone holds the purse-strings.

If any one sends fifty pounds to his banker, or to any correspondent, with instructions that it is to meet a particular call, and is to be so appropriated, he to whom it is sent can, very properly, be forced to refund the money, if he applies it to any other purpose whatever than the one to which it has been thus appropriated by the sender, even though other moneys are owing by him. The same principle has governed the appropriation of the supplies granted by Parliament, up to the year 1857. It will be recorded in history that, in the year 1857, a great and fundamental change took place in the English Constitution, and in the action of Parliament; that, in the great national drama, the character of Hamlet was that year" omitted by particular desire;" that, of the 656 watchdogs chosen by the people to guard the national expenditure, not one was found even to remark the fact, that the annual " Appropriation Act" of that year omitted, and even repealed, that which constitutes its only value and essence the appropriation clause; and that the Act of this year handed over to the arbitrary whim of PALMERSTON's underlings the irre sponsible appropriation and expenditure of all the Supplies, unchecked, unlimited, unhampered by any of the "votes" that had been taken in committee on 66 Supply."

Yet such is the fact. We are humiliated while we write it. PALMERSTON, reckless of everything savouring of constitutional right or bond, has at length even dared to beard Parliament in its special and peculiar function; has got hold of the supplies, and then declared he will use them as he likes; has let the votes be taken, and then snapped his fingers in the face of all of them;

and not one man of the 656 has dared utter a word of remonstrance! So much for Parliament: so much for votes of supply: so much for the guardianship of our liberties and rights. Did we not truly say above, that the shams have it, without the trouble even of a show of hands?

To be precise in our facts :-Every Appropriation Act hitherto passed in England, up to and inclusive of that of March 1857, has carried out the fact declared on its title, by the following clause :

The said aids and supplies provided as aforesaid, shall not be issued or applied to any use, intent, or purpose whatsoever, other than the uses, intents, and purposes before mentioned, or for the other payments, appropriation, or application directed to be made or satisfied thereout by any Act or Acts, or any particular clause or clauses for that purpose contained in any other Act or Acts, of this Session of Parliament.

In the Appropriation Act of the present Session, this clause is omitted. Instead of it, there has been inserted the following, which has