Page:Dwellings of working-people in London.djvu/36

 crowded parts of our City, and the consequent reduction of the death and disease rate, could not be objected to. If we consider the figures for a few moments, we shall readily see that the annual charge would be very small. The present rateable value of property in the Metropolis is nearly 21,000,000l. A rate of one penny in the pound will produce nearly 90,000l., or sufficient to pay the interest on 2,000,000l. and redeem the principal in 40 years. If the money was raised by issuing Metropolitan Consols at 3½ per cent. 2,000,000l would go a long way in paying simply the difference between the purchase money of the land and the sum recovered on its resale, or the sale of the ground-rents. I venture to say, from many years' experience of the subject, that 2,000,000l., or a rate of one penny in the pound for 40 years, applied in the mode suggested, would remove to a very large extent the houses in the Metropolis at the present time unfit for human habitation. Having glanced at the probable cost, let us look at the return to be derived from the outlay. The leading physicians of the metropolis, in the memorial recently presented to the Prime Minister, expressed an unanimous opinion that the disease and death-rate among the labouring population were very largely increased by the unhealthy condition of their houses. This statement has been constantly confirmed by the reports of the sanitary officers of the large metropolitan parishes, and is fully proved by the Registrar-General's returns. These returns show that in 1872 the rate of mortality throughout the Metropolis was 21.5 in the thousand, while the mortality in the improved dwellings for the working classes was only 15.8 in the thousand. If we take the average over a longer period, we find that, in the eight years ending 1872, the death-rate in the Metropolis was 24 in the thousand, against 16 in the thousand in the improved dwellings. The disease-rate has been calculated to be about double the death-rate, that is to say, for every person dying there are two persons afflicted with acute disease, preventing them from following their ordinary work. Now those who know anything of the causes of the increase of late years in the local taxation are well aware that it arises to some extent from the constantly increasing cost of the construction and maintenance of the asylums for the care of the sick poor under the control of the Metropolitan Asylums Board and the Central London Asylums Board. A reduction of the disease rate to any thing like the extent shown by the figures I have just given would soon recoup the proposed