gossip; and the few and rare exceptions uniformly make against you. The inquiry was but a mockery of investigation. Its defects were numerous, and every one fatal. There was not, it would seem, a man on the Committee capable of taking evidence they were all either entirely ignorant of its laws, which, at every step, they violated, or utterly regardless of them. Again, there was no provision for cross-examination; while the witnesses, the chief of whom were grave-diggers, were unawed by the terrors of an oath. Obvious exaggerations were not repressed, but rather fostered; and he who drew the longest bow was obviously the prime favourite. Nay, absurdity arrived at such a pitch, that even the better Members of the Committee vied with the worst class of the witnesses in their extravagances. Colonel Fox himself was all but a rival of Juvenal's witness, who was ready

"To swear he saw three inches through a door,

As Asiatic evidences swore."

In the selection of witnesses, you showed the utmost partiality and exclusiveness. While the law is to affect the whole of the community, the witnesses were taken from a single section of it. Why were Proprietors of non-parochial burial grounds, Trustees of Dissenting chapels with vaults and grave yards, and Dissenting Ministers of every class, overlooked? Were you not well aware that your measure was most extensively to affect the comforts, the interests, the feelings, and, in not a few cases, the fortunes of these classes? Did you not know that some of the places of sepulture which you propose to shut up, have been purchased and prepared at a cost of from twenty to thirty thousand pounds; and that, by their extinction, honest men and virtuous citizens might be brought to beggary? Were these considerations beneath the notice of a legislator? In the course of the inquiry, they were accidentally once and again thrust upon your notice. You were also, we are credibly informed, apprised of them from other sources. But these things were, in your eyes, impertinent trifles; and, in the Bill, you could not afford space for even a passing allusion to them. The Evidence abounds with pathetic references to the injured rights and sacred claims of the clergy, and to the cruelty and injustice of closing

their grounds without ample compensation. On this subject, the Report echoes the Evidence, and the Bill re-echoes the Report. Yes! it was next to sacrilege to impair in the least the comfort of a single Clergyman; but, though a hundred Dissenting Ministers were ruined, it would call for neither compensation nor compassion. Sir, is this justice? You must have learned from Locke, that "the nature and office of justice is to dispose the mind to a constant and perpetual readiness to render to every man his due." Why have you forgotten what is "due" to the Dissenters of England? Has your reading taught you that they are beyond the pale of the British Constitution?

But to return to the principle on which you selected your witnesses. Why were those of them practically acquainted with the business of interment taken exclusively from the lowest class of funeral functionaries? How came you so carefully to set aside the respectable body of metropolitan furnishing undertakers? Were not these, above all others, the men best qualified to speak to the state of the burial grounds, with respect both to fulness and to order? Are not they, likewise, a class of tradesmen whose integrity and intelligence are alike unquestionable, and whose evidence, therefore, would have deserved peculiar attention? When you required information as to the mischiefs arising from the too protracted retention of corpses above ground, were not they the proper, if not the only parties to give it? When you wished to ascertain the probable increase of expenses that would result from burial in the proposed Cemeteries exclusively, were not the persons who would have to perform the work the parties to be interrogated? When you desired to know the best method of providing for the interment of the parish poor, who so fit to be called to your counsels as the undertakers? When you wanted to be furnished with the statistics of comparative mortality, why not have summoned to your assistance the only class who could give them? You not only, however, set at nought the undertakers, but sought the information which they alone could give, from men who knew as little of the subject as yourselves. Of this ridiculous course, we have a pretty example in the case of James Anderton, Esq., one of the Common Council." To this civic Solomon you said:

66

"Q. 1511.-Have you turned your attention to the state of

F

the churchyards in the metropolis ?—I have, but more from report than from personal inspection of them, perhaps.

Why, Sir, did you call such a witness? Could the slightest importance attach to opinions founded on mere "report ?" How came you, then, after this naïve confession of utter ignorance, to question him again, and still further expose his folly by such a question as the following?

"Q. 1519.-What is your opinion of the general state of the churchyards in the metropolis?-My opinion is, that they ought not to be permitted to exist any longer; that they are disgraceful to us as a civilized country."

Sir, you assert, or rather you assume, in the preamble of your Bill, that Interment "within the precincts of large towns in England, is injurious to health, and frequently offensive to public decency, and it is expedient that the same should be prevented." We entirely dispute the premises,. as applied to England at large, or even to London alone. You have wholly failed to establish your case; and, your preamble being unproved, there is no ground for your Bill. The point alleged, as to health, has been abundantly disproved by your only trustworthy witnesses; but, had it been otherwise, and had they all even sworn in the terms of your preamble, still, that would not have altered the real facts of the case. In this matter there is nothing mysterious or recondite. The aid of the Chemist and the Surgeon, of the M.D. and the M.P., are quite unnecessary. The humblest hodman of the Emerald Isle, who earns his hardwon bread among the builders of our Babylon, and has his local habitation in St. Giles's, is perfectly able to decide the question. He has only to perambulate the city, and with open eyes to inspect its graveyards, that he may ascertain the folly and falsity of your conclusions. Were the facts as you would have them, should we require Select Committees to take evidence in support of them? Would not the whole inhabitants of every city be the unavoidable and melancholy witnesses of facts so overt, so general, so terrible? Were the facts as you would have them, would they not, many ages since, have forced themselves on the attention of mankind, clothed in the terrors of pestilence and death? Were the facts as you would have them, inquiry about their truth would be superseded by inquiry about their remedy. Laying aside Walker and his mortal gas, Whitaker and his India

rubber bottle which contained it, why, in your place in the House of Commons, did you not strike out in some such strain as the following?

"Mr. Speaker, I rise to call the attention of Honourable Members and of Her Majesty's Government to the fearful condition of our native country. The evils of intramural sepulture, which, for many ages, have been constantly increasing, have now reached a pitch which calls for the immediate interference of this Honourable House. Not a moment is to be lost. This question ought to take precedence of every other. The consequence of delay for another year may be most disastrous to the health of the nation. England is covered with fountains of pestilence, which, at any moment, from some latent cause, may overflow, filling the land with dismay and desolation! The Metropolis, in which we now meet, may, in one week, be clothed with the terrors of 1665, when well nigh one hundred thousand men were swept into eternity! But, Sir, this is not simply a British question. We hold in our custody the health of Europe and of the world. On the wings of our trade, the destroyer may speed his way to every country, filling it with death and clothing it with mourning! The spirit of philanthropy, therefore, combines with the spirit of patriotism to urge the adoption of means to prevent a catastrophe so fearful. unusual warmth of the present year also affords a timely warning. If such seasons continue, our climate will be assimilated to that of Egypt; England will speedily become another Lemnos; and some British Thucydides will have to record ravages in London far more dire than those which converted Athens into a charnel-house, filling all Greece with distress and death, and the world itself with astonishment and horror!

The

"Sir, the Committee which the House was pleased to grant me, has concluded its labours; the Report and Minutes of Evidence are in the hands of Honourable Gentlemen, who, I trust, will, on the strength of that Evidence, now give me leave to bring in a bill to carry out the recommendations of the Report. But, if Honourable Gentlemen have not yet been able to read the Report or the Evidence, I have only to appeal to facts with which, alas! all are but too deeply conversant. Look, Sir, at residents in the vicinity of our City grave-yards. In their

pallid countenances, in their broken health, in their feeble progeny, and in their extraordinary mortality, you may discern the deadly miasmata which they are hourly breathing! Ask the holders of property adjacent to grave-yards, and they will tell you, that their tenants, terror-struck with the vast, unceasing, and augmenting mortality which reigns around them, are abdicating their houses by thousands; that property there can neither be let nor sold; and that it is falling into a state of ruinous dilapidation! Ask the doctors, and they will tell you that the bulk of their practice lies in the circles which surround the tombs! Ask the managers of the dispensaries, and they will inform you that the majority of their applicants are from the vicinage of the sepulchre! Ask the committees of hospitals, especially of those for fever, and they will tell you that their wards are mainly filled with cases from around the churchyard! Ask the local sick-relief societies, and they will tell you that their principal drain lies around burial-grounds! Ask benefit societies, and they will inform you, that, taught by sad experience, they have ceased to admit members living within at least half a mile of any place of sepulture! Ask the insurance offices, and you will learn that they grant no policies of life insurance, unless on terms of triple danger, to persons living within one thousand perches of a churchyard! Ask the undertaker, and he will assure you that the richest ridge of his wide-spread and endless harvest, lies around the habitations of the dead! Let gentlemen consider these uncontradicted and appalling factsand the catalogue might be greatly enlarged-and I count with confidence on their assistance to perfect and carry this great measure for the salvation of our own country, and the welfare of all nations."

You, Sir, need not be told, that such a speech, if it could be uttered amidst the shouts of laughter which it would call forth, would be deemed a piece of most extravagant burlesque; so contrary to truth are the whole of its allegations. But this is not a whit more extravagant than your Evidence; it is, indeed, only your Evidence concentrated and classified; and only a state of things approaching to this, could demand or warrant the introduction of such a measure. That part of the Evidence on which your Bill rests is a fabrication; and the Bill itself is an absurdity, If you determine to persevere, the public will de