ry, and
degradation than those which, when detailed by Howard, had excited the
sympathy of the world. The Irish poor sink into the unhealthy closes,
lanes, and back streets of large towns; and so frequent are the attacks
of typhus among them, that in some parts of the country the disease is
known as "the Irish fever." It is not merely the loss of life that is so
frightful; there is also the moral death that is still more appalling in
these unhealthy localities. Vice and crime consort with foul living. In
these places, demoralization is the normal state. There is an absence of
cleanliness, of decency, of decorum; the language used is polluting, and
scenes of profligacy are of almost hourly occurrence,--all tending to
foster idleness, drunkenness, and vicious abandonment. Imagine such a
moral atmosphere for women and children!

The connection is close and intimate between physical and moral health,
between domestic well-being and public happiness. The destructive
influence of an unwholesome dwelling propagates a moral typhus worse
than the plague itself. Where the body is enfeebled by the depressing
influences of vitiated air and bodily defilement, the mind, almost of
necessity, takes the same low, unhealthy tone. Self-respect is lost; a
stupid, inert, languid feeling overpowers the system; the character
becomes depraved; and too often--eager to snatch even a momentary
enjoyment, to feel the blood bounding in the veins,--the miserable
victim flies to the demon of strong drink for relief; hence misery,
infamy, shame, crime, and wretchedness.

This neglect of the conditions of daily health is a frightfully costly
thing. It costs the rich a great deal of money in the shape of
poor-rates, for the support of widows made husbandless, and children
made fatherless, by typhus. It costs them also a great deal in disease;
for the fever often spreads from the dwellings of the poor into the
homes of the rich, and carries away father, mother, or children. It
costs a great deal in subscriptions to maintain dispensaries,
infirmaries, houses of recovery, and asylums for the destitute. It costs
the poor still more; it costs them their health, which is their only
capital. In this is invested their all: if they lose it, their docket is
struck, and they are bankrupt. How frightful is the neglect, whether it
be on the part of society or of individuals, which robs the poor man of
his health, and makes his life a daily death!

Why, then, is n