THE SLUMS OF LONDON.

Evening Star, Issue 6481, 24 December 1883, Page 4

THE SLUMS OF LONDON.

The slums of London are mere nests of crime, and are capable of becoming centres of cholera. Some persons have even been heard to wish for a visit fpora cholera (which this summer has been near enough) that the public might be stirred to action. Even if without actual pestilence the position is to the last degree shameful and dangerous. It ia the duty of everyone who realises the faots never to cease agitating(as without agita tion nothing can be done) till the condemned houses are swept away, and till the uncondpraned houses 4re condemned. sven then the task of reforming London poverty is only beginning. The poor themselves, it appears, object highly to State-aided emigration. They prefer to linger at the docks or among the decaying rabbits and the matchboxes in the hope that something vaguely magnificent will be done for them at home, Who can wonder that they have not the heart or pluck to emigrate as the middle classes do when they find England too small for them ? Heart and pluck they can never acquire while their homes are poisonous, and while their education involves precocious acquaintance with recondite immorality. In the meantime, and before the question becomes a party question, private enterprise is doing what ic oan with too large a problem. And this private enterprise, whatever form it takes, whether that of a " Society for the Protection of Lodgers " or not, deserves support and approval. Lodgers may possibly be enabled to "strike" against the heartless speculators who live on them, and Coger's Rents may be left to him desolate.—'Saturday Review."