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 are quite sufficient to reduce the circumstances of the people from financial affluence to habitual penury; and this is actually its effect. The money that might build or buy an unpretending, spacious, well-constructed house is spent in worthless ‘elegance’ and ornament; and the small, ill-ventilated hired rooms are crammed with cumbrous furniture and finery that make habitual cleanliness and health impossible, and phthisis has become the national disease.

In such ‘rooms,’ quite inappropriately named, two millions of the London population are compelled to pass their lives; and the effect upon the social habits and the moral character of men and women is deplorable. A man and wife can live perhaps in quiet in these little dens; but when the family begins to grow, and children multiply, and move and play, as children do, the father finds himself a surplusage at home, and goes for peace and quiet to the public-house, to join his fellow-sufferers from leasehold tenure. There he, of course, must drink, and then the habit comes, and grows. The company is not select; the man, if tolerably educated and intelligent, meets numbers who are otherwise; and he must make the best of, or become the worse for, his companions. To invite a chosen, well-conditioned few to his own home would be absurd. He has no home: the place is but a cupboard, or is possibly a stye. In one small room all culinary and domestic operations must be carried on; the men would therefore be entirely in the way: or if there is another cupboard, called the best front parlour, all its little floor is occupied by quasi-fashionable table, sofa, easy-chair, and chiffonier, the necessary demonstrations of gentility; and not a yard of width is left for movement and for social comfort and companionship.

The women, who are left, and are supposed to be at home, are possibly still greater sufferers: they never get fresh air.