given in the government schools, with the primary instruction afforded by the indigenous village schools, the government scheme of education will, like a pyramid standing on its apex, be destitute of every element of permanence and stability.

March 18th, 1843.

HENRY CARRE TUCKER.

THE HEALTH OF THE PEOPLE AS CONNECTED WITH NATIONAL EDUCATION.

[If any portion of this paper is out of date, the Editor must bear the blame, as it has been in his possession for some months.]

LAST July a Report on the health of the working people of Great Britain was presented to Parliament.* It is full of most valuable facts, bearing directly or indirectly upon National Education in the largest sense of the words, which of course must include the whole moral and intellectual condition of the people. The following are those of the Conclusions in the summary of Mr. Chadwick, the framer of the report, which specially concern us here. The first I give to make the meaning of the rest more obvious:

"That the various forms of epidemic, endemic, and other disease caused, or aggravated, or propagated chiefly amongst the labouring classes by atmospheric impurities produced by decomposing animal and vegetable substances, by damp and filth, and close and overcrowded dwellings, prevail amongst the population of every part of the kingdom, whether dwelling in separate houses, in rural villages, in small towns, in the larger towns-as they have been found to prevail in the lowest districts of the metropolis.

"That the younger population, bred up under noxious physical agencies, is inferior in physical organization and general health to a population preserved from the presence of such agencies.

"That the population so exposed is less susceptible of moral influences, and the effects of education are more transient than with a healthy population.

"That these adverse circumstances tend to produce an adult population, shortlived, improvident, reckless, and intemperate, and with habitual avidity for sensual gratifications.

"That these habits lead to the abandonment of all the conveniences and decencies of life, and especially lead to the over-crowding of their homes, which is destructive to the morality as well as the health of large classes of both sexes.

"That defective town cleansing fosters habits of the most abject degradation, and tends to the demoralization of large numbers of human beings, who subsist by means of what they find amidst the noxious filth accumulated in neglected streets and bye-places.

"That the removal of noxious physical circumstances, and the promotion of civic, household, and personal, cleanliness, are necessary to the improvement of the moral condition of the population; for that sound morality and refinement in manners and health are not found long co-existent with filthy habits amongst any class of the community."

* Report to Her Majesty's principal Secretary of State for the Home Department, from the Poor Law Commissioners, on an inquiry into the sanitary condition of the labouring population of Great Britain; with Appendices. Presented to both Houses of Parliament, by command of Her Majesty, July, 1842.

The evidence, given at great length in the Report, clearly shows that from the causes mentioned in the first of the above "conclusions," the sacrifice of life is so much greater in the towns than in the country, that the average duration of life for the labouring classes in Manchester is only seventeen years, and in Leeds, nineteen years; while in Rutlandshire it is thirty-seven, and in Wiltshire, thirty-two years (p. 77). One of the moral effects of this premature termination of life, is that there is a very unduly small proportion of old, or even middle aged men, who as heads of families can exercise an influence over the younger men. At Manchester, the torchlight meetings "consisted of mere boys, and there were scarcely any men of mature age among them. Those of mature age and experience, it was stated, generally disapproved of the proceedings of the meetings as injurious to the working classes themselves." But on asking how it happened, that these, the elders, did not exercise a restraining influence upon their less experienced fellows, it appeared that their members were too few to effect that end :

-

"On inquiring of the owner of some extensive manufacturing property, on which between one thousand and two thousand persons were maintained at wages yielding forty shillings per week per family, whether he could rely on the aid of the men of mature age for the protection of the capital which furnished them the means of subsistence? he stated that he could rely on them confidently. But on ascertaining the numbers qualified for service as special constables, the gloomy fact became apparent, that the proportion of men of strength and of mature age for such service were but as a small group against a large crowd, and that for any social influence they were equally weak.... ..In the metropolis the experience is similar........ In general, the juvenile delinquents, who come from the inferior districts of the towns, are conspicuously under size. In a recent examination of juvenile delinquents at Parkhurst, by Mr. Kay Shuttleworth, the great majority were found to be deficient in physical organization........Instances of criminals of great strength certainly do occur, but speaking from observation of the adult prisoners from the towns, and the convicts in the hulks, they are generally below the average standard of height....... I might adduce the evidence of the teachers of the pauper children at Norwood to show that a deteriorated physical condition does in fact greatly increase the difficulty of moral and intellectual cultivation. The intellects of the children of such inferior organization are torpid; it is comparatively difficult to gain their attention or to sustain it; it requires much labour to irradiate the countenance with intelligence, and the irradiation is apt to be transient. As a class they are comparatively irritable and bad tempered. The most experienced and zealous teachers are gladdened by the sight of well grown healthy children, which presents to them better promise that their labours will be less difficult, and more lasting and successful. On one occasion a comparison was made between the progress of two sets of children in Glasgow, the one set taken from the wynds and placed under the care of one of the most skilful and successful infant schoolmasters, the other a set of children from a more healthy town district, and of a better physical condition, placed under the care of a pupil of the master who had charge of the children from the wynds. After a trial for a sufficient time, the more experienced master acknowledged the comparative inferiority of his pupils, and his inability to keep them up to the pace of the better bodily conditioned children.

"The facts indicated will suffice to show the importance of the moral and political considerations, viz., that the noxious physical agencies depress the health and bodily condition of the population, and act as obstacles to education and to moral culture; that in abridging the duration of the adult life of the working classes they check the growth of productive skill, and abridge the amount of social experience and steady moral habits in the community; that they substitute for a population that accumulates and preserves instruction, and is steadily progressive, a population that is young, inexperienced, ignorant, credulous, irritable, passionate, and dangerous,

having a perpetual tendency to moral as well as physical deterioration." -(pp. 201, 202, 203.)

It seems to be well established that the want of ventilation and of drainage in the overcrowded dwellings of the poor in towns (and often in the country too) has such an effect by the miasms which they give birth to―upon the bodily health and nervous energies, that it becomes almost, if not quite, impossible to refrain from drinking ardent spirits, and when that is once begun, education and all the fruits of education, speedily disappear. Mr. Sheriff Alison (quoted by Mr. Chadwick) says of the great towns of Scotland, "in the contest with whiskey, in their crowded population, education has been entirely overthrown." And Mr. Chadwick himself adds, "I consider that the use of whiskey and the prostration of the education and moral habits for which the Scottish labourers have been distinguished are, to a considerable extent, attributable to the surrounding physical circumstances, including bad ventilation."

......

"Mr. Baker...... describes the population [in Leeds] living in houses with broken panes in every window-frame, and filth and vermin in every nook, with the walls unwhitewashed for years, black with the smoke of foul chimneys, without water, with corded bed-stocks for beds, and sacking for bed-clothing, with floors unwashed from year to year, without offices, ; while without, there are streets elevated a foot, sometimes two, above the level of the causeway, by the accumulation of years, and stagnant puddles here and there, with their fetid exhalations; causeways broken and dangerous, ash-places choked up with filth, and excrementitious deposits on all sides as a consequence; undrained, unpaved, unventilated, uncared for by any authority but the landlord, who weekly collects his rents from his miserable tenants.

Can we wonder that such places are the hot-beds of disease, or that it obtains, upon constitutions thus liberally predisposed to receive it, and forms the mortality which Leeds exhibits? Adult life, exposed to such miasmata, gives way. How much more then infant llfe, when ushered into, and attempted to be reared in, such obnoxious atmospheres? On the moral habits similar effects are produced. An inattention on the part of the local authorities to the state of the streets, diminishes year by year the respectability of their occupiers. None dwell in such localities but to whom propinquity to employment is absolutely essential. Those who might advocate a better state of things, depart; and of those who remain, the one-half, by repeated exhibitions of indecency and vulgarity, and indeed by the mere fact of neighbourship, sink into the moral degradation which is natural to the other, and vicious habits and criminal propensities precede the death which these combinations prepare."

Mr. Chadwick on this observes :

"No education as yet commonly given appears to have availed against such demoralizing circumstances as those described; but the cases of moral improvement of a population, by cleansing, draining, and the improvement of the internal and external condition of the dwellings, of which instances will be presented, are more numerous and decided, though there still occur instances of persons, in whom the love of ardent spirits has gained such entire possession, as to have withstood all such means of retrieving them. The most experienced public officers acquainted with the condition of the inferior population of the towns, would agree in giving the first place in efficiency and importance to the removal of what may be termed the physical barriers to improvement, and that against such barriers moral agencies have but a remote chance of success. A gentleman who has had considerable experience in the management of large numbers of the manufacturing population, stated to me, that in every case of personal and moral improvement, the successful step was made by the removal of the party from the ill-conditioned neighbourhood in which he had been brought up. When a young workman married, he interfered to get him a better residence, apart from the rest; and when this was done, important alterations followed; but if he took up his abode in the old neighbourhood, the condition of

his wife was soon brought down to the common level, and the marriage became a source of wretchedness."-(pp. 133, 134.)

The following case is given in the Report as "an example of the powerful nature of the physical elements of deterioration."

"The means of education in Alston parish [a mining district] are extensive : there is the grammar-school, the master of which must be acquainted with Latin, but he gives a general education; there is a charity-school, and a school kept by a master on his own account; there is the school of the London Lead Company at Nenthead, at which other children besides those of their own work-people are allowed to attend. There is a school at Garigill Gate, and one at Tynehead, and another at Leadgate; there are also many dame-schools, and ten Sunday-schools........ I procured the catalogues of several libraries, and the books are such as to convey valuable information, and are far superior to most of the works which are found in the catalogues of the institutions called literary and scientific in and about the metropolis....... As to the intellectual condition of the people, it is decidedly superior to that of any district of England of which I have any knowledge. The witnesses uniformly manifested a clearness of comprehension of the inquiries made of them, and gave distinct replies, and added of themselves other information bearing on the subject. Almost all of them could sign their evidence, and most of them wrote exceedingly well........ The evidence of the employers and the parochial authorities, as well as of the men themselves, proves that there is a very general sobriety, and that the contrary practice is exceeding rare........ Offences against the law are very rare.— -(pp. 203, 204.)

Such are the happy effects of education in a district where "the employers and persons of the higher classes have paid great attention to maintain the means of moral improvement." But then, alas! "they have not been made aware of the practicability or of the importance of sustaining the physical condition of the work people," as has been done with the workmen in other mines; as for instance, at Camborne (pp. 197, 203). The first consequence of which is that the average duration of life, and therefore average number of premature deaths of heads of families, is almost as great-mark, as unnecessarily great—as in Manchester or Leeds; and the next, that there is no hope of long sustaining the moral and intellectual condition of the people against such a pressure. For Mr. Chadwick adds

"Instances have been frequently presented, in the course of this inquiry, of the moral degradation of the children of work-people, and of the work-people themselves, who have once been what these miners [of Alston] now are, in moral condition." (p. 204.)

The following will have a direct practical interest for Schoolmasters, illustrating the serious effects of imperfect ventilation in school-rooms. "A striking illustration of this was afforded in the case of a large school for children during the years 1836 and 1837, as recorded in the second volume of the PoorLaw Reports. Such general failure of health, and such mortality had occurred among the children, as to attract public notice, and the animadversions of many medical men and others who visited the schools; but by most the evil was attributed chiefly to faulty nourishment; and it was only after the more complete examination, made by direction of the Board, and of which the report is published as above stated, that the diet was found to be unusually good, but the ventilation very imperfect. Suitable changes were then made; and now, in the same space where 700 children were by illness awakening extensive sympathy, 1100 now enjoy excellent health. The defective state of information on the subject of ventilation, is frequently shown in reports, which assume that apartments containing given cubic feet of space are all that is requisite for life and health; whereas, if a spacions drawing-room be completely closed against the admission of air, an inhabitant confined in it would in time be stifled, whilst by active ventilation or change of air, men working in connection

with diving-machines live in the space of a helmet, which merely confines the head. In the majority of instances of the defective ventilation of schools, the palid countenance and delicate health of the schoolboy, which is commonly laid to the account of over-application to his book, is simply due to the defective construction of the schoolroom. In the dame-schools, and schools for the labouring classes, the defective ventilation is the most frequent and mischievous."

Mr. Riddal Wood, an agent of the Manchester Statistical Society, thus describes some of the crowded schools found in the course of examinations, from house to house, of the condition of the town-population in Manchester, Leeds, Hull, and York:

"I may mention, that in one school, where the average attendance was, I think, thirty-six, not above eight children were present. Upon my inquiring of the mistress as to the reason, she stated that the remainder of her scholars had been taken with the measles. I perceived a bed in the school-room, upon which lay a child much disfigured by that complaint. Another child of the mistress had died of the measles. I had reason to believe that the contagion had been communicated originally from that child, because the cases of the scholars all occurred subsequently. In a school in Liverpool, having above forty scholars in average attendance, I found the number diminished to somewhere about ten. On inquiring into this case, I ascertained that it arose from the prevalence of scarlet fever, and the master made this remark: It is a very strange thing how this fever should have attacked almost all the children coming to my school, whilst none of my neighbours have got it.' I attributed that to the very crowded state of the school. The room was very low. When the whole of his scholars were in attendance, it must have been excessively crowded. There was no thorough ventilation. I found that in many of the schools there were from twenty to (in some cases) nearly a hundred scholars crammed into a dirty house or cellar, without air or ventilation, the effluvia from whose breath and clothes was very offensive, and must, I am sure, be very injurious to the children's health. In most of these places, too, I have found that the ordinary household occupations have been carried on by the old women.-(pp. 119, 120.)

"Another inquirer states, that in the neighbourhood of Bolton he saw seventy scholars cooped up in a badly ventilated room, not twelve feet square."

The several extracts here given from this very interesting and valuable Report, are but a few instances, and those not the most frightful, of the condition in which it too clearly proves that the larger part of our countrymen by far the larger part of the working men and their families-are, in Christian England. I have not transferred to these pages the pictures of the cellars of Liverpool and Manchester and our other manufacturing towns, nor of the inhabitants (there are 9,500 of them in Liverpool alone) who rot in these loathsome dwellings, often lying twelve or more on the ground of a single cellar, without even straw or shavings under them, and with typhus fever "constantly present among them" nor of the hardly less appalling misery of the cottages of the peasantry in many parts of the country, where, as in the cellars of the towns, men, women, and children are huddled together by day and night in a single room, and where the moral degradation of beings made in the image of God-His children, and our brothers and sisters -might make us for a moment almost forget the sore evils of body under which they are bowed down without hope, almost without desire, of deliverance. Let the reader turn to the book, and study these for himself; he cannot do it too thoughtfully, too religiously. And then let him ask himself, What remedy? The evidence is conclusive—and the more so, because given by witnesses whose bias (at least of all of them who are connected with the administration of the Poor-Law, of which the avowed object is to induce habits of independence and self-guidance