Cartwright and his "power loom" (1785), were some of the chief, and before them came Brindley's canals and after them the epoch-making development of steam power. And this revolution, not less than the increase of population, so intimately connected with the need of sanitary reform, brought unforeseen things with it.* Then, in the third place, there have been great changes in political thought. The declaration of Independence in America and the French Revolution awoke in men's minds new thoughts of liberty. They were lessons in practical politics, which left only a little less mark on England than they did on America and on France. Men began to consider in what life consisted. They felt stirring within them new ambitions and new hopes, both of which were stimulated by the course of events in India. Nor was the nineteenth century disinclined to reap the harvest of the seed sown in the eighteenth. † Lastly, it would be idle to suppose that amid all the social changes of the time, the force of religion was inoperative. On the contrary it cannot be doubted that the Methodist revival which began in 1738, and which was represented by the preaching of the Wesleys and Whitefield, followed as it was by religious revival of various kinds, contributed its quota, and that not a small one, to the advance of sanitary reform. For in the light of the new humanity" poverty, vagrancy, disease, and vice came to be looked upon as evils to prevent. True religious revival is generally the forerunner of social * See also Industrial History of England, by H. Gibbins. (Methuen and Co. 1890), and Arnold Toynbee's Industrial Revolution. (Longmans, Green and Co. 1894). † See J. R. Green's Short History of the English People ("Modern England" Section). reform. It was so in this case. John Howard undertook his "winter's journey and drew the attention of Parliament to the need of prison reform; Sharp, Clarkson and Wilberforce grappled with the slave trade; Edmund Burke appealed, not in vain, for just government of dependent races in India; and Sir Samuel Romilly and Sir James Mackintosh began the early reform of criminal law. But most important of all the influences arising from religious activity was the betterment of personal life and the increase of moral responsibility. CHAPTER II. THE SANITARY GOVERNMENT OF ENGLAND. "Governments, like clocks, go from the motion men give them; and as Governments are made and marred by men, so by them they are ruined too. Wherefore Governments rather depend upon men than men upon Governments. Let men be good, and the Government cannot be bad. If it be ill they will cure it."-WILLIAM PENN, Founder of Pennsylvania, 1682. "First ask yourselves, 'What have I done for my education? ' Then, as you advance in life, 'What have I done for my country?' so that some day that supreme happiness may come to you, the consciousness of having contributed in some measure to the progress and welfare of humanity."—From the last public address of Louis Pasteur, 1892. THE HE British Empire depends for its sustenance not upon dominions and territory alone but upon men, not upon markets alone but upon homes. For these are the vitals of a nation and springing from a wise control of them are the issues of life. And if this country be, as it has been happily termed, the heart of the Empire, we cannot afford to ignore the fact that it is upon a just and free system of local government that the real welfare of a world-wide State depends. Nor is local government only an affair of rates and taxes, or water supplies and sewerage, or birth registration and burials. It is a system of co-partnership between those who govern and those who are governed in the interest of the whole composite life of a nation. It was Edmund Burke who first extended our vision of the manifold operations of the State and the breadth of its basis. He told us that it was " not to be considered as nothing better than a partnership agreement in a trade of pepper and coffee, calico or tobacco, or some other such low concern, to be taken up for a little temporary interest and to be dissolved by the fancy of the parties. It is to be looked on with reverence, because it is not a partnership in things subservient only to the gross animal existence of a temporary or perishable nature. It is a partnership in all science; a partnership in all art; a partnership in every virtue and in all perfection. As the ends of such a partnership cannot be obtained in many generations, it becomes a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are dead and those who are to be born."* English government then is based in large measure upon two general principles. The first is that all responsible citizens shall have a share, directly or indirectly, in the government of the country. The second is that the whole system of control shall be based upon local autonomy, the network of local government areas (local authorities) being knitted together by, and made responsible to, central departments of State. The means necessary for the carrying on of government are supplied by rates and taxes, and the members of the community who actually do the work are: (1) elected representatives who render voluntary Reflections on the Revolution in France." services to the State and (2) a number of more or less expert permanent officials who are paid for their services. The Empire is thus built upon local government and upon free and representative institutions. The Machinery of Government. It will be convenient to tabulate the various bodies which now exist for the carrying on of government, particularly in regard to public health administration. I. 2. The Crown. Parliament, for legislative purposes. 4. County Councils. 5. Local Authorities (Sanitary Authorities). 6. Parish Councils. 7. Poor Law Unions. 8. Special Bodies for Special Purposes. The pyramid which is thus based on local government has its apex in the Crown or monarchy, the supreme head of the State, whose public action is limited by Parliament, which in its turn is the supreme legislative body. Then come the central departments of State, of which five may be named as directly concerned with the public health. First there is the Local Government Board, which was created in 1871 to concentrate in one department the chief powers as to poor relief, public health, and local government generally. The Board has a President (with a seat in the Cabinet) who is assisted by parliamentary and permanent secretaries, and a large staff including many experts. Some of its chief powers concern poor relief, but it possesses extensive powers respecting public health, it has special authority to deal with epidemics of disease, and it watches over the financial operations |