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[ state 754 fffr* &£#&£?? Satdhday,
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THE CRIMES OF PEACE. How many momentous ...
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THE HORRORS OF MODERN SEPULTURE. The for...
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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The Vvolvjaihampton Cask Mrci^'^Fe «?„«•...
Justice Erie admitted that the book of prices prepared by the workmen appeared to be very fair and reasonable , and he thought it would have been better if the Messrs . Perry had accepted the offered mediation of the mayor . Under these circumstances it is difficult to perceive that the men have been logically convicted of any offence whatever , and it is to be hoped that , when they are brought up for sentence in London , the judges , perceiving the logical flaw in the proc ess will quash the conviction .
[ State 754 Fffr* &£#&£?? Satdhday,
754 fffr * & £# & £ ?? [ Satdhday ,
The Crimes Of Peace. How Many Momentous ...
THE CRIMES OF PEACE . How many momentous questions of the day would be solved , for the day at least , by a good stirring war ! It is true that the prosperity of the last war time , so often vaunted by retrograde politicians , was not a genuine accumulation of wealth ; but it is equally true that the heavy debt which we have now to pay , is not the necessary incident of wars ; on the contrary , some of the most warlike nations and governments have not incurred debt . Pitt far excelled Napoleon in the building up of that national institution ; we have found Whig Ministers
and peace add to the debi ; we do not remember that Charlemagne bequeathed a national debt to the fundholders of the next generation . It is quite true that the process of sound production was hindered or perverted by war , true that gross abuses were fostered in the contract and loan system , true that improvidence was stimulated to the highest pitch by a paroxysm of expenditure for which unborn generations have had to pay . It is equally true that in the next war England will not repeat the blunder of her intolerable self-sufficiency ^ and undertake to pay the piper , in that deadly dance , for all Europe . It is still more true that the next European war or succession of wars will probably be of a more self-supporting- kind . Present
appearances indicate either a war of Emancipation for Peoples against Absolutism , or a war of Northern Absolutism against the ultra-civilized degeneracy of Western Europe . Is the day of the People coming when the universal suffrage of Knowledge and Industry shall prevail against crowned families and obsolete feudalism ? or , the Roman Empire having passed away , the Teutonic race having spent its energies , the Anglo-Saxon race having culminated to the commencement of its decline , is the day coming for the hordes of Russia , whose pioneers are preparing the ground for her march in every quarter of Europe ? One or other of those wars the aspect of Europe prognosticates : in either case the victor will acquire wherewith to pay the
piper . Meanwhile , happen how it might , war , we say , would release us , for the day at least , from some pressing and ugly questions ; and possibly those questions might recur at a time when we should be better able to deal with them . Manifestly it would rid us of embarrassments like the question which Lord Talbot raised on Friday night—the redun
dancy of unemployed naval and military officers . Other unemployed classes would find something to do . The Protection which followed war , and the Free-trade which followed Protection , have brought our commerce and industry into positions excessively embarrassing , and almost forbidding a solution by direct or quiet means . A war , in the ordinary sense of the word , might supersede a commercial revolution or an industrial rebellion . On Saturday , the Morning- Chronicle made a sudden onslaught upon Ilolywell-street , and summoned the Society for the Suppression of Vice to its duty in that behalf . This is an ugly subject . We do not defend Ilolywell-street , but We say that it is simply the outward symptom of a deep-seated disease , the causes of which we / irmly believe are to be sought , by the light of present , observation , no loss than of history , in the enervations of peace . The effect in aggravated in our day by u perverse morality , which , defying the light of modern science no less than of old experience , socks , not to cultivate and
train the faculties , hut to repress some of them , to supersede others , and to alter flic essential elements of our nature . Schilling denounces " * those wretched moralists who , the better to govern man , corrupt his nature and banish everything positive from his actions ho completely , that the people fflout on the appearance of a great crime that they may refresh themselves by the aspect of something positive . " Thwn . rt . ed impulses , over-excited nerves , scanty opportunities , concentrated stimulants of crowded towns , the depravities of satiety or of the opposite extreme , desperate privation—all these influence * daily aggravate that which to the bulk of
our population is the sweeping denial for the exercise of manliness , the increasing spread of that trading torpor which is miscalled peace . The most numerous classes of our population now present starved peasants , overworked and stunted factory hands , enervated shopkeepers , and overall , a gentry not practised in war , and becoming too numerous for real familiarity with the manly sports of peace . In England , by favour of peace , man is becoming a strictly domesticated animal—tame , torpid , and timid .
We write thus , not because we wish to persuade any part of the people of this country into a war , but because , believing the approach of war-time inevitable , we desire to see the public mind accustomed to confront the idea . It is desirable that we should understand its advantages as well as its dangers ; that we should not forfeit the best position by a timid procrastination of our own -advance ; but that , by a hardy foresight , we should be able to take that course which will avoid the worst consequences and will conquer the largest amount of good for mankind and for our country .
The Horrors Of Modern Sepulture. The For...
THE HORRORS OF MODERN SEPULTURE . The form we idolize may become loathsome ; the features we now so delight to gaze upon will be come hideous to the sight and noisome to the senses . Our living nature revolts from the idea , and that it may not press upon our sense , we surround death with poetical forms . We dispose the cramped limbs of death with decency and care ; we place flowers in the bier ; we carry the body with solemn procession to the grave ; we hallow it with sacred offices ; we place on its bosom the verdant sod : we raise the " storied
urn or animated bust ; " we inscribe an epitaph , recording the virtues of the departed and our undying affection ; and we turn our back upon the grave , leaving it to be desecrated by the sexton ' s augur , as he " tries " the overcrowded ground , perhaps to be chopped up and burned , to clear the way for a new comer , or at least to be thrown up again to the light of daybefore that morning in hope of which it was consigned to the earth—perchance to travel about in dogs' mouths , or be carted away in unmannerly heaps to the purlieus of the city .
Judging from our places of Sepulture no one could possibly give the English credit for respect towards the departed . That which meets the eye of the most careless passenger is bud enough ; but little do the majority of the people think of their vicinage to the mo-t horrible scenes , nor of the death and disease which they continually breathe . [ t needed the Asiatic Cholera to draw " the attention of the Legislature to the matter .
The report on the scheme for extramural sepulture , which the People knows by heart , proves that there is no modification nor adaptation of intramural interment which can possibly meet the occasion . London is so thickly populated , and houses abut so closely upon all the graveyards , that nothing but absolutely closing them for ever ought to satisfy tVie People or the Legislature . Why docs the public require to be dinned con tinually with the cuckoo cry that , the placing of a dead body in a grave , and covering it with a few feet of earth , does not prevent the gases generated by decomposition , together with the putrescent matters they hold in suspension , from permeating the surrounding soil , and escaping into the air
above and the water beneath . Mi . Leigh , a chemist of repute , stales more than this : — " If bodies were interred eiubt or ten feet deep in sandy or gravelly soils , I am convinced liitle would be gained by it . : the gises would find an exit , from any practicable depth . " A new grave dug in a churchyard quickly becomes a perfect well of carbonic acid gas , distilled from the . surrounding soil : and in this pit no light will burn , nor could animal life by any possibility subsist . Imagine the very water of I he m- tropoli . s holding human flesh in suspension . Yes , we wash our rooms , our persons , nay , absolutely drink , a solution of decomposed human bodies ! We breathe dend body : Dr . Play fair estimates the mass of dead atmosphere around
us—1 he amount , of kiihcs evolved annuiilly from the decomposition of 1117 corpses por acre , which i « very tar short of the number actuall y interred in tho metropolit an graveyards , in not less than f > 5 , 2 Gl eubiefeet ; hut an 62 , 000 interment ** tuko phtct ' unnually in the metropolis , the amount of gases emitted is equ . il to 2 , 672 , 680 cubic feet , the whole of winch beyond what ia absorbed by tho soil , rnuat p uss into tho water below , or the . utinoephore ubovo . Tho chairman and surveyor of the Holborn and
of graveyards repose in a fancied secur ity . The drains which communicate with the sewers waft the odour of putrescent mortality into the boudoirs of Hyde-park and the saloons of Belgravianay , it ascends to the very nostrils of Koyalty . Dr . Reid states that the " burying ground around St . Margaret ' s Church is prejudicial to the air supplied at the Houses of Parliament , and to the whole neighbourhood ; that the noisome exhalations are observable at all hours of the night and morning ; and that in private houses as well as at the Houses of Parliament , he has had to make use of ventilating shafts , or of preparations of chlorine , to neutralize the offen & ive and deleterious effects .
those who are happily removed from the vicinity Finsbu'y division of sewers state , that " when t h ^ sewers come in contact with the churchyards , the exudation is most offensive ; the matter from the churchyards exudes through the sides of the sewers ; the adjacent waters will find their way through the walls of these sewers , and will penetrate even through cement . It is impossible to prevent it ' * . ' All classes of witnesses bear testimon » that " the stench proceeding from som e of the crowded and confined graveyards in the metropolis is frequently so great , that the residents in the neighbourhood are obliged to shut their windows for hours and days toge her . " But let not those who are hanm'lv removed from the vicinitv
The mode of burial in the metropolis—as indecent as it is subversive of morality—has acquired a frightful notoriety . Dr . Milroy describes how pauper interments take place : — "A pit , or what is called a * double grave , ' is always dug , and is k ^ pt open ( boards only being laid over the mouth ) until it is filled with the due number of coffins , and then it is closed up with earth . —the last coffin lying within three or four inches of the surface . A grave of this sort will hold , if it be 14 feet deep . about 18 adult coffins * and as many more children . The next grave is opened close alongside of the one just filled up , with no space of earth left between ; consequently the piles of coffins in the latter one , is very generally exposed in the act of digging the new grave .
Dr . Milroy saw one of these graves , twelve feet deep , at the bottom of which was an exposed coffin , interred there seven weeks before . The bodies are placed one upon another , without a particle of earth between them . And another witness says he has " seen the most offensive greenish discharge running from the bodies . " Nor does the condition of the vaults offer one redeeming point in this horrible picture . Mr . Ashley , the Professor of Chemistry to the Polytechnic Institution , after asserting that the vaults he has visited are generally in a very disgraceful state , says : —
" That of St . Mary-at-Hill is in a condition that is a disgrace to any civilized nation . Here are placed some hundred and fifty coffins , in all possible positions , piled one above another—the lower crushed by the weight of those above . The great majority are broken and decayed , the remnants of mortality falling out between the rows of coffins . In all but the newest coffins the external wood is decayed , leaving the lead exposed . It is of course impossible in these instances to ascertain whose remains they contain . Enormous cobwebs and fungi , with much dirt and
filth , render the inscriptions that remain illegible . Many of the coffins consist of a mere shell of decayed wood , which on the hlightest touch breaks into / powder and exposes tho remans of the skeleton . The coffins are so fragile , and the piles so much out of the perpendicular , that it is dangerous to approach very near them . In the two further corners large collections of bones ure piled together , without any attempt at order or dicency —a most iev «; lting sight . Tno vault ia not ventilated , and the odour from decomposing llesh is cxtiemely foul . "
And in such a fane , with reek ng mortality on all . sides , are people invited to worship : to sit in crowds and imbibe miasma sufficient to * ow disease in the strongest frame . There should be no surprise thai the delicate are so frequently overpowered and compelled to leave the church during the service . Of the influence all this has upon the minds of find feelings of the people wo shall Hike occasion
to speak in a futuie article . In this we have hurriedly referred to the parts of the report which speak of the unhealthinesu and indecency of ihe present practice of Sepulture . Tho report wa « published more than a year ago . Another report , to tho . 'Ust of December , 1850 , has only j »« t been ordered to be printed . Thus , in a question of such vital importance both in a sanitary and in a moral point or view , does th < i people suffer from the lftbituul delay of the Government . The Board of Health would have grappled with tho whole ques-
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Citation
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Leader (1850-1860), Aug. 9, 1851, page 14, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/cld_09081851/page/14/
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