SLUMS OF LONDON.

Patea Mail, Volume IX, Issue 1132, 31 December 1883, Page 3

SLUMS OF LONDON.

The alum* of London are more nestsof crime, and are capable of becoming centres of cholera. Some persons have even been heard to wish for a visit from cholera 1 (which this summer, has been near ienough) that the public might be stirred to action. Even if without actual pestilence the position is to the last degree shameful and dangerous. It is the duty of everyone who realises the factsThever to cease agitating (as without agitation nothing can be done) till Hie condemned houses are swept away, and till the uncondemned houses are condemned. Even then the task of reforming London poverty is only beginning. The poor themselves, it appears, object highly to State-aided emigration. They prefer to linger at the docks or among the decaying rabbits.and IFo Tnat'ch" boxes in the.hopethat something vaguely magnificent will be done for them at home. Who can wonder that they have not the heart or plucky to emigrate as the middle classes do when they find England too small for them ? Heart and pluck they can never acquire while their homes are poisonous, and while their education involves precocious acquaintance with recondite immorality. In the meantime, and before the question becomes a party question, private enterprise is doing what it can with too largo a problem. And this private enterprise; whatever form it takes, whether that of a “ Society for the Protection of Lodgers” or not, deserves support and approval. Lodgers may possibly be enabled to “strike” against the heartless speculators who live, on them, and Cogef’s Rents may bo loft to him desolate.— Saturday Review