friendly eye. But surely
we need not create it in this wholesale fashion; and then say that that
which is a warning and a penalty, is but wholesome discipline, to be
regarded with Mussulman indifference.

* * * * *

I come now to what seems to me the most important result obtained in the
whole course of the elaborate evidence taken before the Health of Towns
Commission. It appears not only that distress can exist with a high rate
of wages, without apparently any fault on the part of the sufferers;
{214a} but, actually, that in some instances, _there is an increase of
sickness with an increase of wages_. {214b} The medical officer of the
Spitalfields' District states that the weavers have generally less fever
when they are out of work. This statement is confirmed by testimony of a
like nature from Paisley, Glasgow, and Manchester. It is one of the most
significant facts that has struggled into upper air. We talk of the
increase of the wealth of nations--it may be attended by an increase of
misery and mortality, and the production of additional thousands of
unhealthy, parentless, neglected human beings. It may only lead to a
larger growth of human weeds. The explanation of the matter is simple.
Dr. Southwood Smith tells us that "Fever is the disease of adolescence
and manhood." Now, wretched as the dwelling houses of the poor are,
_their places of work are frequently still worse_. {215a} Consequently,
with an increase of work, there comes an increase of fever from working
in ill-ventilated rooms, an increase of poor-rates, {215b} and an
especial increase of orphanage and widowhood, as the fever chiefly seizes
upon persons in the prime of life. And a large part of this increase is
thus distinctly brought home to neglect, or ignorance, on the part of the
employers of labour. Surely, as soon as they are made cognizant of this
matter, they will at once hasten to correct it. In the appendix to this
work there is a letter from Dr. Arnott, giving an account of the causes
of defective ventilation, and the remedies for it. We can no longer say
that the evil is one which requires more knowledge than we possess to
master it. Science, which cannot hitherto be said to have done much for
the poor, now comes to render them signal service. It is for us to use
the knowledge, thus adapted to our hands, for a purpose which Bacon
describes as one of the highest ends of all knowledge, "the relie