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Grey River Argus, Volume XIII, Issue 1626, 21 October 1873, Page 2

The outward and visible signs of godliness cannot be said to be wanting in Greymouth, if these consist of tabernacles, clergymen, churchwardens, elders, and grave countenances among a section of the community once weekly, yet it ia not impossible that the aggregate amount of the virtue might be enhanced by increased attendance in the tabernacles, the prevalence of evangelical spirit on the part of pastors or of Christian spirit among congregations, and the abandonment of secular ' employments and amusements —such, say, as beer consumption — on Sundays. Perhaps there is not very much to be proud of, yet there is not very much to condemn, and if there is the latter, it is from the Pulpit, riot from the Press, that rebuke or advice should come. On what is next to godliness— cleanliness — freer comment may, however, be made, ■md it is a fair question for members of a community to put to themselves through such columus as these — Are we as cleanly as we ought to be in the interests of common or individual health, of preventing epidemic disease, or of promoting the general physical condition of the population? There is, moreover, the greater propriety in putting this question to ourselves voluntarily and openly, because by the laws of the country, if such be not done, and a satisfactory answer be not given, there is provision made for the question being put compulsorily, an

•>r a satisfactory answer being enforced :. tl c local cost of shame and shillings. There is such a thing as The Public Health Act, and under it power given, not only for such preventatives as quarantine and vaccination, but for the existence of General and Local Boards fortified by r'->rty clauses to cleanse and purify, and in these interests to impose rates and. penalties. For the placing of foreign importers of disease in quarantine there has been preparation made in Greymouth, as elsewhere, by the appointment of a Board, boundaries, and quarantine regulations according to the latest dicta of medical science, and that there is a disposition to vaccinate and be vaccinated was sufficiently illustrated not very long ago, though it may have been more through the influence of alarm than of intelligent foresight. It is a different thing to be able to assert with anything like emphasis that the sanitary condition of the town is all that it should be, but the assertion has to be" made — honestly, of course — and it becomes every member of the community to assist the Borough Couucil to give a full, true, and favorable report, as they are now called upon to do by the Central Board for Westland, or it will become their .duty to bear the brunt of failure in that particular — which means simply a special rate, without an opinion being asked or taken as to the propriety of its imposition. The Borough Council requires sympathy in this regard, if in none other, as some cynics might .insinuate, because, however capable they may be of negotiating loans, of improving streets, or of assessing properties and wharfage rates on imported produce, they are not naturally experts in smells, detectives of miasma, discoverers of oznne, or as good judges of sulphuretted hydrogen as the consumers of Greymouth gas. Neither have they access to the diaries of the medical men, or opportunities of debiting the true proportions of death and disease to the exercise of the great benevolent science and the 1 influence of the Tidal Crack. For these and other sound reasons they require sympathy and support. They have, it is true, the advantages of the presence of a porous subsoil, of a large sluicing supply in West Coast clouds, and of Gorge winds that are-more refreshing than respected, but there is more required than mere natural agencies, and, for the information of the public, what is required' is by no means ambiguously described by the Board of Health.