n defending and establishing it. It has been
well said, that "to become popular is an easy thing; but to do unpopular
justice,--that requires a Man." And Edwin Chadwick is the man who has
never failed in courage to do the right thing, even though it should
prove to be the unpopular thing.

Whilst burrowing amidst the voluminous evidence on the Poor Laws, Mr.
Chadwick never lost sight of his sanitary idea. All his reports were
strongly imbued with it. One-fourth of the then existing pauperism was
traced by him to the preventible causes of disease. His minute
investigations into the condition of the labouring population and of the
poorer classes generally, gave him a thorough acquaintance with the
physical evils that were preying upon the community, carrying them off
by fevers, consumption, and cholera; and the sanitary idea took still
firmer possession of his mind.

One day, in 1838, while engaged in his official vocation of Secretary to
the Poor-Law Commission, an officer of the Whitechapel Union hastily
entered the Board-room of the Poor-Law Commission, and, with a troubled
countenance, informed the secretary that a terrible fever had broken out
round a stagnant pool in Whitechapel; that the people were dying by
scores; and that the extreme malignity of the cases gave reason to
apprehend that the disease was allied to Asiatic cholera. On hearing
this, the Board, at Mr. Chadwick's instance, immediately appointed Drs.
Arnott, Kay, and Southwood Smith to investigate the causes of this
alarming mortality, and to report generally upon the sanitary condition
of London. This inquiry at length ripened into the sanitary inquiry.

In the meantime, Mr. Chadwick had been engaged as a member of the
Commission, to inquire as to the best means of establishing an efficient
constabulary force in England and Wales. The evidence was embodied in a
report, as interesting as a novel of Dickens, which afforded a curious
insight into the modes of living, the customs and habits, of the lowest
classes of the population. When this question had been dismissed, Mr.
Chadwick proceeded to devote himself almost exclusively to the great
work of his life,--the Sanitary Movement.

The Bishop of London, in 1839, moved in the Lords, that the inquiry
which had been made at Mr. Chadwick's instance by Drs. Southwood Smith,
Arnott, and Kay, into the sanitary state of the metropolis, should be
extended to the whole population, city, rural, and manufacturing