The Evening Star THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2812, 22 February 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 22, 1872.

Our attention, as citizens, has been so much occupied latterly with gas, water, and the removal of the Cargill Monument, that we have allowed ourselves to overlook other matters requiring immediate attention. We can scarcely overrate the importance of gas and water to the moral well-being and

heal tli of a City. The gas question has, however, been'* settled for a time : the water question has scarcely assumed form and deliuitenes-s. The desirability of its being under Corporation control is plain enough to ever} one ; but negotiations have not yet gone beyond expressing the desire to possess. “ We may also give the Corporation credit for instituting moans of surface drainage, through kerbing and channelling, that will tend much to improve the sanitary condition of the City. Contrasted with what our correspondent writes concerning Auckland, we in Dunedin must consider ourselves as living in a comparatively pure, unpolluted air. But it must not he supposed, therefore, that we have nothing to complain of. In fact, the very sweetness of those parts of the Citv frequently flushed with water, for which means of running off quickly have- been provided, serves to bring out in strong contrast tbe neglected swamps and standing pools tint arc allowed to ferment and putrefy, because less prominently under public notice. Public thoroughfares are sure to be attended to. Nuisances in them are not tolerated, because the}' force themselves on everybody’s attention. They are the outside of the sepulchre, fair and trim to look upon, but very often they but divert attention from the corruption that is behind them. Very few people, through choice, take a walk along the foreshore between Stuart street and Pelichet Bay jetties, while thousands of feet traverse the main streets of the City. Comparatively few, therefore, know of the pools of standing water, or the undrained bogs in the neighborhood and ’ at the back of Cumberland street, and fewer still reflect upon the consequence that may result from the putrefaction of animal and vegetable matter in them. We have no hesitation in saying that the health of the people of Dunedin lias much improved with every well-devised scheme of general utility. The introduction of water, and the consequent increased cleanliness of our streets and houses have done much. The abominable cesspool nuisance remains unabated, although the evil consequences have been to some extent neutralised through the water which is drank being mainly derived from a source not contaminated by them. Human ingenuity is however powerless to deal effectually with matters so nearly affecting individual liberty as interference in domestic arrangements, depending, moreover for their being effectual, upon intelligent eo-operation, trough a sense of family or personal responsibility. We have not yet arrived at that perfection of discipline that leads every man to reflect that in every action of his life he has to look at its effect upon the interest, health, or comfort, of others as well as himself. Our ideas of liberty arc too vague, iudelinite, and selfish as yet. A century hcncc, perhaps, it may become part of the creed of civilised man. Until this is acknowledged as a principle of action we shall have to contend against the evils of badly ventilated houses, and the miasma from filthy yards, and ground saturated by cesspools in out of the way places. Nob alone has Dunedin to fear danger arising from this source, it is common to all cities in the world. The Melbourne press are urging it upon attention, in view of the increase of small-pox and the danger of cholera ; it is the chief source of danger in England ami the Continent of Europe ; the cities and towns of Asia are constantly visited by disease generated through neglect and similar causes; and all our New Zealand towns have grown up in the habit of defying disease invited by them. Admitting then the dilliculty of the case, so far as regulating individual conduct is oon-

cernccl, it becomes quite a different matter when a Corporation ought to act. in all probability much of the fever and influenza that have prevailed more or less during the past two months, have had their origin in those undrained swamps. Every body when suffering from illness speculates upon how and whence it arose, and where fever is concerned, in nineteen cases out of twenty attributes it to a wrong source. One has been at a friend’s house where fever has been half-a-dozen months before, another took it from this body, another smelt a smell and was sure that was the origin of it, and so on : but few seem to imagine that the pestilence that walks in darkness may bo ever present, waiting, until through some circumstances the body is prepared to vitalise the germs of the disease, and that those germs may have taken wing from the noisome swamps an d pools of our foreshore, and have hovered round their victim, waiting for the fitting moment to pollute the breath he draws, and with it to enter into and poison his blood. We commend these considerations to our Corporation, as pointing to one of their first duties. Gas is good; water is good ; surface drainage is good ; the removal of the Cargill monument and the forming of a street across the Octagon convenient j

but all -are useless to those stricken with fever ; to them the prospect points to that'other civic duty which may be also said to be good, of providing a hallowed last resting place in a well appointed cemetery : but better than all these, and first in importance is vigorous public health. To this, all others may be said to be auxiliary and subsidiary.