crowded multitude, the coaches, carts,
wagons, omnibuses, gigs, chaises, phaetons, cabs,
trucks, dogs, boys, whoopings, roarings, and
ten thousand other distractions), they are
represented to be in a most unfit state to be
killed, according to microscopic examinations
made of their fevered blood by one of
the most distinguished physiologists in the
world, PROFESSOR OWEN— but that's humbug.
When they are killed, at last, their reeking
carcases are hung in impure air, to become,
as the same Professor will explain to you,
less nutritious and more unwholesome— but
he is only an uncommon counsellor, so don't
mind him. In half a quarter of a mile's
length of Whitechapel, at one time, there shall
be six hundred newly slaughtered oxen hanging
up, and seven hundred sheep— but, the
more the merrier— proof of prosperity. Hard
by Snow Hill and Warwick Lane, you shall
see the little children, inured to sights of
brutality from their birth, trotting along the
alleys, mingled with troops of horribly busy
pigs, up to their ankles in blood— but it makes
the young rascals hardy. Into the imperfect
sewers of this overgrown city, you shall have
the immense mass of corruption, engendered
by these practices, lazily thrown out of sight,
to rise, in poisonous gases, into your house at
night, when your sleeping children will most
readily absorb them, and to find its languid
way, at last, into the river that you drink—
but, the French are a frog-eating people who
wear wooden shoes, and it's O the roast beef of
England, my boy, the jolly old English roast
beef!

It is quite a mistake— a new-fangled notion
altogether— to suppose that there is any
natural antagonism between putrefaction and
health. They know better than that, in the
Common Council. You may talk about
Nature, in her wisdom, always warning man
through his sense of smell, when he draws
near to something dangerous; but, that won't
go down in the city. Nature very often don't
mean anything. Mrs. Quickly says that prunes
are ill for a green wound; but, whosoever
says that putrid animal substances are ill for
a green wound, or for robust vigor, or for any
thing or for any body, is a humanity-monger
and a humbug. Britons never, never, never,
&c., therefore. And prosperity to cattle-driving,
cattle-slaughtering, bone-crushing,
blood-boiling, trotter-scraping, tripe-dressing,
paunch-cleaning, gut-spinning, hide-preparing,
tallow-melting, and other salubrious
proceedings, in the midst of hospitals, church-yards,
workhouses, schools, infirmaries, refuges,
dwellings, provision-shops, nurseries, sick-beds,
every stage and baiting-place in the journey
from birth to death!

These uncommon counsellors, your Professor
Owens and fellows, will contend that to
tolerate these things in a civilised city, is to reduce
it to a worse condition than BRUCE found to
prevail in ABYSSINNIA. For, there (say they)
the jackals and wild dogs came at night to
devour the offal; whereas here there are no
such natural scavengers, and quite as savage
customs. Further, they will demonstrate that
nothing in Nature is intended to be wasted,
and that besides the waste which such abuses
occasion in the articles of health and life—
main sources of the riches of any community
—they lead to a prodigious waste of changing
matters, which might, with proper preparation,
and under scientific direction, be safely
applied to the increase of the fertility of the
land. Thus (they argue) does Nature ever
avenge infractions of her beneficent laws, and
so surely as Man is determined to warp any
of her blessings into curses, shall they become
curses, and shall he suffer heavily. But, this
is cant. Just as it is cant of the worst
description to say to the London Corporation,
"How can you exhibit to the people so plain
a spectacle of dishonest equivocation, as to
claim the right of holding a market in the
midst of the great city, for one of your vested
privileges, when you know that when your
last market-holding charter was granted to
you by King Charles the First, Smithfield
stood IN THE SUBURBS OF LONDON, and is in
that very charter so described in those five
words?"— which is certainly true, but has
nothing to do with the question.

Now to the comparison, in these particulars
of civilisation, between the capital of England,
and the capital of that frog-eating and wooden-shoe
wearing country, which the illustrious
Common Councilman so sarcastically settled.

In Paris, there is no Cattle Market. Cows
and calves are sold within the city, but, the
Cattle Markets are at Poissy, about thirteen
miles off, on a line of Railway; and at Sceaux,
about five miles off. The Poissy market is
held every Thursday; the Sceaux market,
every Monday. In Paris, there are no
slaughter-houses, in our acceptation of the
term. There are five public Abattoirs—
within the walls, though in the suburbs— and
in these all the slaughtering for the city must
be performed. They are managed by a Syndicat
or Guild of Butchers, who confer with the
Minister of the Interior on all matters affecting
the trade, and who are consulted when
any new regulations are contemplated for its
government. They are, likewise, under the
vigilant superintendance of the Police. Every
butcher must be licensed: which proves him
at once to be a slave, for we don't license
butchers in England—we only license apothecaries,
attorneys, postmasters, publicans,
hawkers, retailers of tobacco, snuff, pepper,
and vinegar—and one or two other little
trades not worth mentioning. Every arrangement
in connexion with the slaughtering and
sale of meat, is matter of strict police regulation.
(Slavery again, though we certainly
have a general sort of a Police Act here.)

But, in order that the reader may understand
what a monument of folly these frog-eaters
have raised in their abattoirs and
cattle-markets, and may compare it with