LIFE IN LONDON.

Waikato Times, Volume I, Issue 179, 1 July 1873, Page 3

LIFE IN LONDON.

Tp* English capital, indeed, adopts now » policy which, until a comparatively recent date, was never thought of— it lays itself out for an unlimited growth of population. The old districts are widened up, and the new are constructed to be loosely peopled. The ancient close-packing system has ceased, and light and space are bonier let into overcrowded localities TWrn are now half a million more people than there were in 1861, but the traffic in the chief thoroughfares is easier. There am fewer dead-lock *in the streets, ami the business and pleasure are minagcil with greater ficilifcy. These are the results of the simple f.ict that London has within the last quarter of a century rec3gnisi>d the coming of the stress of an unparelled population, and made preparations to naeet it. Three hundred years ago Queen Elizabeth issued a proclamation forbidding the erection of now buildings "where none sucli had existed within the memory of man ; " for the extension of the metropolis was not only calculated to encourage the increase of the plague, but wa3 thought to increase trouble in governing »ueh multitudes— a dearth of victuals, the multiplying of beggars, an increaso of artisans more than could live together, and the impoverishment of other cities for lack of inhabitants. At that, time the whole population of England and Wales was probably Jess than five millions, of whom certainly not more than half ft million lived in London. But the inhabitable area then was very limited Without any of tho modern machinery of speedy communication and protection from depredation, a city stretching upwards of eleven miles from north to south and from eaat to west would have been an impossibility . The estimate of a population of 13,000,000 m 1973 is based ■upon the increase of tho ten years from 1861 to 1871, which , .was one and a half per cent per annum. Tho increase would be much greater— showing a population of something like 16,000,000— \t calculated en the rate of accretion in the first fifty years of the present century, and still more if reckoned Upon the per centime of the last twenty or thirty years. The ratio of increaso of the last ten years, which gives the result of 13,000,000 m 1973, is the lowest since 1841. But that the rat© Iraa fallen somewhat since 1861 can hardly be taken to indicate a permanent turn in the tide. The decade in which occurred the American civil war, the stoppage of our cotton manufacture, the greatest financial crisis of the century, and a general depression of trade, is not a fair gauge of the tendency of the population of a great city which •suffered sererely from all those «ause». The fact that in such a time tho people of the capital increased by 417,000 is ondence of the determined growth of London under difficulties. Judging from the state of things since the census sras taken nearly two years ago, the increase of population between 1871 and 1881 will be at a greater rate than one and a half per cent. Thirteen millions, therefore, a hundred years hence, is a Tery low estimate for the population of London, and I can imagine nothing short of irretrievable national calamity, or a complete and wholly unlookedfor revolution in the conditions of civilisation in this jpart of the world, that can prevent the realization of that estimate. A population of not less than thirteen millions, and a hundred years more of progress in the arts, in scienos, literature, the dram*. From this date a century of inventions, discoveries, new modes of increasing productions and sparing toil, new pleasures and comforts, higher knowledge of all knowable things, inestimable improvements in the art of health, better laws and principles of government— who can form a conception of life in Loudon at the end of that hundred years ! In point of time the period is ihort ; but there have been no ages of the past by which may be measured this century forward. A hundred years ago the machinery which regulates our habits and modes of living to-day was not thought of, and we were still s^rugglm^, not very hopefully, to emulate the highest civilisation of old Greece and Rome In all, except pure art, we have now gone far past those ancient standards, and so close have we run once or twice on the heels of the divine masters of the past that the next high ■wave of genius, or the next after that, may land us far ahead of old history, even in the accomplishments in which the hrst civilized nations most excelled.— Gentleman s Magazine.