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    LONDON AIR AND WATER . rouR-AND-TWENTi reports of the sanitary officers of various metropolitan districts enable us to arrive at a pretty clear idea of what has been and is being done in London towards improving tlie health of the inhabitants and eradicating the pest-spots , which may at any moment he o . onverfcfid into the nurseries

    of a ravaging epidemic . In looking over these papers , we find one story repeatedly told . In the same parish , on equally favoured ground , a great difference exists in the average amount of disease and death . Take , for example , Islington : the west sub-district is more healthy than the east ; and why ? The houses in the latter district are smaller ,

    more persons occupy the same space , ventilation is imperfect ; the streets , too , are narrower and less airy , and there is a marked absence of the necessary appliances for cleanliness , comfort , and health . The locali ty of Laurencebuildinga , 3 STewington-common , is repr esented aa being tine very hotbed of disease ; the road being many inches deep in decaying vegetable refuse worked up with the detritus of the roads into n thick paste ; tho teneme are

    themselves filthy in the extreme , very dilapidated , and surrounded by cesspools and decomposing matter . Botherhithe , wlii «« obtained such fatal notoriety during the cholera of 1849 , passed through the epidemic ot 1854 with comparative immunity , sanitary measures having "been largely carried on there in tho meantime . But tho newly built streets of the Dcptford Lower-road , erected on undrained garden ground and possessed of a bad water sunolv , suffered

    severely from the pestilence . Tho state of some of tho houses , especially in the parishes o Lambeth , and Southwark , it would scarcely

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    the very increase of the general well-being ;'' and from that moment arose a deplorable antagonism between the territorial proprietaries and -what MI . Miafcs calls " the richesse mobiliere , " a phrase which we scarcely know how to translate . It means the interest represented by personal property , or movable property ; let us borrow the phrase at once , and call the whole class especially meant , mobiliary property . He means apparently

    Ln : ni ; s Camebon- made candid . ] Vt . JtriiES Mxa ^ s spoke with , great feeling , describing in all the pride of magnanimous confession the glories lie was relinquishing : — " Industry has its honour and glory . To do great things in industry and finance is an object as noble and also as attractive as the doing of great things in letters , the arts , or in politics . " I proudly avow that I have this ambition , as many of my fellow-citizens lave , for it is not merely the means of acquiring fortune ; in our days it is one of the first aspirations of human , society to create those beautiful

    ways of communication -which bring peoples together , and facilitate the exchange of ideas as of products ; to bring about the restoxation and sanincation of old cities , the building of . new * ones ; to develop the working of those vast basins of combustibles , the extent of which nature seems to have measured by the grandeur of their uses ; to found those establishments , manufacturing or roetallurgic , which send to all points of the globe the products of our industry ; in fine , to give to 9 tates and governments that concours Jlnancier which supplies to them nerve in war as well as in peace , and which raises the science of finance to the height of a political

    ce . " " Well , gentlemen , without wishing to exaggerate what -we have done with you , we may yet say , with legitimate pride , that there are few of those beautiful works or of those great operations in which we have not participated . " "What are then the causes , he asked , which have determined me to stop in this course , attended by so much success , with such flattering prospects ? Let the reader note how M . Miees spices his confession with new advertisements of what his Company may do hereafter . Wowrforhis description of' causes . ' There are no passages in the classic poeta more powerful , and , what is more , there is a considerable degree of truth in it : —

    " Look and listen around you , whatever may be the centre , social or accidental , in which you may be placed : you will remark a movement of opinion against what is called business , and against those who conduct it . At the theatre , in drawing-rooms , in books , in the judicial or sacred tribune , as well as in the legislative tribune , in citiea , in country places , you will ohserve this constant fact , a certain irritation , and , by consequence , hostility , varied in its forms according to the men , the situation , and the places , an irritation which , in expressing itself , goes from raillery to abuse , from hesitating supposition to formal accusation , but of which the significant character is an almost unanimity . "

    11 ... Since the early months of 1856 , there has been a decline in the value of ' valeurs mobilieres , ' to the extent of several milliards of the wealth of the country , producing the irritation I have described , the more from the unexpectedness of the cause , the country being otherwise in a state of industrial and commercial prosperity . " "What , then , " he asked again , " are the real causes o f this decline ?' Ah ! this is coming to the point ; but here the romancist suddenly deviates into a siding . " This is not the place , " he says , " to enter into the details of that grave question . The causes are complex , but I may indicate one ¦ which IB dominant—it is—distrust . " This is

    indeed a revelation ! Uut what brought about the distrust J " You know , " said M . Mjb . es , with , tender simplicity , " how delicate are questions of credit , " and then he defines credit . Far M . Mjbks is as powerful as Asteuii AVax / lbbidge in definitions . " Credit is truly said to be faith . " Revelation the second ! But how was it that faith had thus been undermined ? In explanation , M . TMiit £ a treals ua to a hit of historv . Mires trea-ls us to a bit of history .

    In the first place , Government had thought it necessary to take precautions for restraining the excess of speculation ; and " as soon aa it was supposed that Government distrusted tho situation , the same sentiment of anxiety necessarily penetrated the spirits of men , and the ascensional movement waB arrested . " Then comes another astounding disclosure . " Distrust was also overexcited by the decline which injured the interest of those who held commercial securities . " But M . Mra&s has discovered a much more

    historical cause for the difficulty . " Bad crops and inundations inflicted on agriculture an impotence to satisfy the demands created by

    to indicate the high stock-jobbing interest , the wealthier portion of the share-broking interest . " Hostility was especially turned upon railway property ; mobiliary property was looked upon as favoTired at the expense of agriculture . " "The subvention granted to railway companies , and the guarantees of interest accorded to all shareholders , were remembered . " " [ Railways were reproached with the monopoly which had not been conceded to them . " " The service

    rendered by this beautiful work was denied ; its influence on the increase of public wealth was misunderstood . No credit was given it for carrying despatches gratuitously , or for the enormous redaction of cost in the carriage of grain . " Thus M . Mibes shadowed the causes of a situation " unexampled in history , since it is in the bosom of a profound peace and of a magnificent financial situation , that a general weakening of industry has occurred . " But there was a third cause ; and here came out a reminiscence of Ai / exandbe Dumas the younger ' s Question- cf Argent : —

    but there is another ' . * Compagnie des Chemins de Fer et des Houilleres , ' established in 1854 , for objects not very clearly defined in our records ; thirdl / the « Compagnie des Journaux Reunis ' with a capital of 120 , 000 ? ., for objects we suppose , indicated in its title ; and the name of Jules Miees meets us in many other Did not

    quarters . we find it , for example , in the agency of a great Spanish loan by which it was calculated that the Spanish ' Government would net about twenty-three per cent , of the sum subscribed by the lenders ? Why was it that this great man thought of retreating from the lead of the powerful company which he had formed ? The reason is grand : —

    "When you formed with us , " he asked , " a powerful association of capital , was it merely that it might produce 5 or 6 per cent . ? . . . " . '¦ And because the powerful society' is descending to that level , M , Mib&s , with mortified pride , resolved to retire . Such was his explanation ; but in the name of a unanimous meeting , Count Simeon presented

    an address signed by 400 shareholders , possessing 12 , 3 . 68 shares , earnestly beseeching M . Miees to continue in the enjoyment of the full confidence of the proprietary ; and the Count , Avith flattering roughness of remonstrance , moved— " This meeting , fully confident in M . MiBfes , does not accept Ids resignation . "

    What then is M . Mrafts ' s position ? He has warned the shareholders that they must expect very much less than the original plan of the association promised them ; and by this course he has obtained a complete bill of indemnity beforehand . Can they blame him hereafter , whatever may happen ? The example is "worth the consideration of some directors in our own great joint-stock companies .

    " If , on the contrary , nothing stops the course of the system of defamation and outrages directed against men who have rendered , we do not hesitate to say , veritable services to their country , and . who have , by their laborious efforts , contributed to raise the public credit to a high degree of power , confidence , instead of being reestablished , cannot but suffer new attacks . " This opinion . is not new ; in other epoques , great ministers , whom France honoured , and whose memory is guarded by posterity , understood the necessity of surrounding financiers with consideration . Cbampfort made the remark that Moliere , who had exposed on the stage all classes of society , had never placed financiers upon the scene ; and he added that it was through Colbert that he had been forbidden t > y Louis XIV .

    " It was because Colbert knew that the men who represent credit cannot be attacked in their consideration without credit being equally attacked ; and he knew also how much credit is necessary to the prosperity and greatness of state 8 . " Who does not now appreciate the censorship of the press ? The only Fault is , that in Paris it is not strictly enough enforced . We suspect that there are railway companies in England who perfectly sympathize with M . Mikes and with Colbeht .

    From these generalities ME . Mires came back to his muttons—to his own resignation and the position of the company ; and again he painted the tempting picture which he , with magnanimous forbearance , was about to abandon . " There are , " he said , " beautiful and grand perspectives in all parts of Europe as in France ; but how long , " he asked , " will our transition state continue ? " " You have formed a powerful company ; even if you were to wind up now " Wind up ! Has the great Jules Minis with his followers come so near to that precipice ? "If you were to wind up now , the security is complete . " The

    security is ' complete !'— the shareholders could just get back their property 1 " The security is . complete if you continue . " But why should M . Minns abstain from leading his followers to those 'beautiful and grand prospectives ? ' This is t 7 io point ; and the reason ho gives is as grand a stroke , of statesmanship as we remember to have witnessed ; but M . MEinfcs is a great man . Tho ' raison aociale' of the ' aociete" en commandite , ' originally entitled ' Caisao ob Journal dos Ohemina do Fer , ' that ia tho registered name of that company is ' Jvwjs Ml « fc 8 and Cio . ;'

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    9 () 4 frHE IiEADEl . JZg ^ g ^ September 19 , 1857 .

• Citation
  • Leader (1850-1860), Sept. 19, 1857, page 904, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/l/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2210/page/16/