should seek in their old home for those
manufactured articles to the use of which they are
habituated, and should send the raw materials
of the new countries to our shores.

With the further development of colonisation,
therefore, the well-being of our country is closely
united. Let us for this reason, if for no other,
see whether human life can be economised at
home. It is in our large towns and cities that the
greatest amount of disease prevails, and where
the largest number of English lives are wasted.
It must not, however, be imagined that disease
and death increase in the ratio of the number of
inhabitants of a city. This is far from being
the case. In London, crowded, foggy, black
as she is, the average number of deaths each
year, during the ten years ending in 1860, was
in the proportion of twenty-four persons out of
each thousand; whereas, during the same period,
the number of deaths in Salford was in the
proportion of twenty-six in the thousand; at
Birmingham twenty-seven, at Leeds twenty-eight,
at Manchester thirty-one, and at Liverpool
thirty-three, though London had a population
eighty-two times larger than Salford, ninety-four
times larger than Birmingham, a hundred
and seventy times larger than Leeds, more
than three hundred times larger than Bristol,
a hundred and ninety times larger than
Manchester, and more than eighty times larger
than Liverpool.

While it is satisfactory to learn that though
London contained so many more inhabitants
during the ten years ending in 1860 than in the
previous ten years, as that the space formerly
occupied by three persons had to be occupied
by four, still the deaths within the metropolis,
in spite of this overcrowding, decreased during
the second ten years from twenty-five to
twenty-four deaths among each thousand
inhabitants, (that is to say) that one life was
saved among each thousand of the people, yet
it is far from satisfactory to learn also, that,
taking the Registrar-General's own "standard
of health," there was wasted in London during
those ten years, an immense amount of human
life, and that the number of London men,
women, and children, whose lives were thus
wasted, was equal to the whole population of
Birmingham, nearly double that of the inhabitants
of Manchester or of Leeds, nearly four
times larger than the population of Bristol, and
nearly equal to the population of Liverpool or
of Salford.

That this great waste of life is still going on,
we are assured by the Registrar-General in his
report for the year 1863. "If," he writes, "we
take seventeen deaths among a thousand persons
as the standard rate of mortality, the mean
mortality of London in 1860-63 yielded in
round numbers six unnatural deaths annually
on every thousand inhabitants, or 17,426 on the
year, and 334 weekly." Thus, in one year there
was wasted in London a number of human lives
equal to the whole population of Richmond or
Gravesend; yet London has a far cleaner bill of
health than any of those towns we have named.

It may possibly be questioned whether the
registrar has not placed his average standard of
health a little too high, and whether he has not
pointed to a degree of sanitary perfection which
it is out of the power of our cities to reach.
We have no doubts of this kind. We believe
that, although much has been done towards
advancing and improving sanitary science, it
is yet in its infancy;. and we hold that the
facts, that in many districts of England and
Wales the registrar's standard has already been
reached, and that in some few the mortality
has been as low as sixteen and even fifteen
deaths a vear among a thousand inhabitants,
fully justify him in his calculation.

Regarding the population of London, says the
registrar, "it is so vast, that it is subject to no
accidental fluctuations; yet, as the tide in some
years carries more and sometimes less water
from the sea into the Thames, so in some years
the stream of new comers into the population
rises above and sometimes falls below the
standard. The observations on the movement
of the population have hitherto given, as the
result of in-come and out-go, clear proofs of the
greater strength of the influx, and, judging by
the past, about 44,266 souls were added to the
population in the year 1863 31,059 by excess
of births, 13,207 by excess of immigrants over
emigrants."

Well may the registrar ask whether London
is equal to the task of providing by new and
improved arrangements for this accumulation of
human beings. And he does well in giving the
warning, that "in a city or a state, the growth
of its population is not a strength to be trusted,
but a weakness to be feared, if improvement
in its physical and moral condition is not
commensurate with the growing urgency of its
wants."

London has not proved herself equal to the
task of accommodating this great influx. We
agree with the registrar that much has been
done to improve its sanitary condition; and
we thank him for reminding us that it is
not so long since the loss of life in London
was much greater in proportion to the population
than the loss of life among the English in
India. We agree with him, too, that its present
comparative salubrity is as much the creature
of art as the fertility of the soil in Holland,
which the sea once covered; and also that if its
sanitary dykes be neglected, the three millions
of people inhabiting it may again be overwhelmed
by cholera, dysentery, and even plague.

Is the rate of improvement in the sanitary
condition of the metropolis satisfactory? It is
not. Unless more active measures be adopted
to ensure greater sanitary progress, the next
decennial volume of the registrar—the report
which will be made up to the end of the year
1870—will probably tell us that the health of
the metropolis has retrogressed instead of having
improved. Says the registrar, "the health of
London was less favourable in the three years,
1861 to '63, than it had been in the two
previous years." Indeed the mortality "actually