Page:The Ethics of Urban Leaseholds.djvu/33

Rh a compound of the Pozzi and Piombi and the Bridge of Sighs, with every association of discredit and of disrepute, young men will hardly practise self-denial to attain so pitiful an end. No man is intelligently proud of any leasehold house; he may have some mean pride in its pretentiousness and paltry show; but if he has good sense and sensibility he feels the thing to be an illegitimate production, crooked and false in character, and he despises it. If occupants of leaseholds could imagine, even for a moment, that the houses were their own in fee, the thought would give them an astonishing experience of mental dignity. How much more powerful for good would be the actual fact that they were freeholders.

The effect of leasehold tenure is particularly manifested in the quality and stature of the London population. Separating recent importations and mere summer visitors, there is a large residuum of weakly, nervous semi-dwarfs. A fairly-built pedestrian going eastward from Belgravia to St. Luke's or Bethnal Green, will, if observant, notice, or at any rate will feel, that as he goes he rises by comparison in animal physique. He seems to be a Saul among the people, and, without a thought, to add a cubit to his stature. But a country family for two generations subject to the influence of London houses obviously recedes towards the state of pre-historic and primordial humanity. If men are played upon by their environment, and those who are the fittest constantly survive, we have the philosophic reason for the undersize of genuine Londoners; they suit themselves to then-habitual abode, and in their generations they become homunculi by reason of their little homes. In intellectual and moral power there seems to be a similar decrepitude: of native Londoners it is remarkable how few comparatively are distinguished men. The cause of the deficiency is clear enough; this leasehold tenure, with its cellular constructions and bad air, has naturally an enervating influence on the brain. Thus, when referring to an accident at Kensington,