SLUMS OF LONDON.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1127, 17 January 1884, Page 3

SLUMS OF LONDON.

The slums of London are mere nests of crime and are capable of becoming centres of cholera. Some persons have even been heard to wish for a visit from cholera (which this summer has been near enough) that the public might be stirred to action. Even if wit: out actual pestilence the position is to he last degree shameful and dangerous. It is the duty of every one who rcaliv. t the facts never to cease agitation (as : hout agitation nothing can be done) . the condemned bouses are swept aw ,nd till the unconderned houses are cc emned. 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 houses and the match boxes in the hope that something vaguely magnificent will he done for them at home. Who can wonder that they have not the heait or pluck to cmigiate, as the middle classes, do when they find England too small for them 1 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 large 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 1 strike ’ against the heartless speculators who live |on them, and Coodger’s Rents may be left to him desolate,—Saturday Review.