The causes are mainly two-the unwholesomeness of the houses in which the poor live, and the number of persons who live in them. The first is, as will be shown, the more important; but it will be convenient to clear the ground by beginning with the second. Overcrowding in towns is of two sorts-the overcrowding of single houses by human beings, and the overcrowding of a given area by blocks of houses. The second kind, however, will more properly be spoken of under the head of unwholesomeness, because the way in which it principally acts is by depriving each house of proper ventilation. The overcrowding of single houses, or more accurately of single rooms, has always made a strong though not a fruitful impression on the public imagination. The reason probably is that the mischievous results are of a kind especially easy to realize. People who live in houses where, professedly at all events, sanitary requirements have been properly attended to, may find some difficulty in fancying what it would be to live in houses where these requirements are systematically neglected. But every one has had some experience of what it means to be in an overcrowded room, and can conceive what it would be to have to undress and sleep and dress in such a room without any means of securing privacy even as regards persons of different sex. This is the state of things which the mention of the houses of the poor as things needing improvement usually calls up to the minds of benevolent persons; and certainly nothing can cry more loudly for change than a system under which every report of a Medical Officer of Health in a large town tells of single rooms inhabited by fathers and mothers, by grown-up sons and daughters, and by a young man taken in as a lodger. Under such circumstances as these neither health nor decency can be maintained except by exceptional good fortune. There is not the cubic space, not a fifth part perhaps of the cubic space, which physicians tell us is essential to the one; there is not the separation between the sexes which natural instinct tells us is essential to the other.

But although overcrowding is the evil which most strikes the imagination, it is not the evil which ought to receive most attention. In determining what are the points in the condition of the poor which we will try to mend, the first inquiry should always be, what are the points which most admit of mending? It is better to aim at attainable reforms, even if they leave untouched much that we should like to alter, than to aim at reforms which are unattainable, and by consequence to end in achieving no reform at all. Now, a crusade against overcrowding is in a great measure a crusade against an inevitable incident of the conditions under which the poor live. It is mainly due to the desire to save in rent. Two rooms cost more than one, and unless a poor man is more than ordinarily alive to considerations of health and decency, he will be tempted to make one do. If he once gets accustomed to making one do, it is a chance if he ever learns to enlarge his wants. He portions out his income on the assumption that only so much of it will be wanted for rent, and unless his wages increase faster than his family, he will never be in a position to

pay more rent without a sense of positive sacrifice. This is a cause of overcrowding which no legislation can touch. Supposing that the occupation of private houses were placed under regulations resembling those in force in common lodging-houses, these rules could be of no force without a system of inspection of the most searching and ubiquitous kind. Every house must be registered, the authorities must be furnished with particulars of all of the inmates, and they must be empowered to enter at all times to make sure that none had been omitted from the list or misdescribed as regards sex or age. The mere mention of such a scheme is enough to show its impossibility. The poor must, for the most part, be cured of overcrowding by the tedious and circuitous process of raising their standard of living both as regards health and decency. It is true that in many cases overcrowding exists in combination with the want of sufficient house-room, and so far as this is the case the evil can be dealt with in various ways. But there is good reason to suspect that it would not be removed by the provision of sufficient house-room. Instances are constantly found in which there is great overcrowding in one house while rooms are standing empty in an adjoining house. Those who have taken the management of house property in the hope of making their relation to the inmates a means of leading them to a better way of life speak of the difficulty they have in persuading their tenants to make their lodging keep pace with the growth of their children; and even among a class which is able to pay for better accommodation there is often a considerable indisposition to spend money on this object. To have three rooms instead of two, for example, would in the eyes of many working-men amount to being over-housed. They would think it a waste of money, much as a man with 1,000l. a year would think it a waste of money to fit up his house with the latest and most scientific appliances in the way of ventilating apparatus. What to the classes above them are absolute necessaries are to them mere luxuries; and until they have learned by observation and comparison to estimate them differently, overcrowding will continue. By degrees, it may be hoped, the improved health and comfort of those who have paid the additional rent which is demanded for better accommodation will become too conspicuous for the lesson to be missed. Actual teaching may do something to hasten the change, and in proportion as working-men come to understand, or to take on faith, the elementary laws of health, they will be more willing to make the money sacrifices which obedience to the laws of health often entails. But for the present men who feel thus will be in a small minority, and so far as legislation is concerned they must remain in a small minority.

It would be wrong, however, to conclude from this that Parliament can do nothing in the matter. It cannot prevent overcrowding, so far as this overcrowding means the collection of too many persons in a single room, but it can prevent the creation of new causes leading to overcrowding. One of the most prolific of these is the demolition of houses to make way for new streets, new public buildings, new lines of railway, and new

stations. It is particularly the business of Parliament to interfere in this case, because without the intervention of Parliament the evil which has to be dealt with could never have arisen. The consent of Parliament is required for all these improvements. Railway companies and municipal authorities cannot ordinarily obtain the land they need for their several purposes unless Parliament gives them the power of purchasing it without the will of the owner, and supplements all defects of title. There is no obligation upon Parliament to do this, and, consequently, if any harm follows from doing it, Parliament must bear the responsibility. The wholesale clearances which have contributed so largely to the overcrowding of great towns are as much the work of the Legislature as though they had been effected in pursuance of an Act for the speedier eviction of poor tenants. The least that Parliament can do, now that the effect of these clearances has become known, is to take care that there shall be no more of them. Under proper management the construction of every one of these new streets and buildings might have been made an occasion of improving the condition of the persons evicted to make room for them. All that was required was that part of the cleared ground, or other ground in the immediate neighbourhood of it, should have been reserved for the erection of houses suited to the class, and accommodating in the aggregate at least the same number. In London, at all events, it cannot be said that the necessary space was not to be found; for near every block of street or railway improvements there is usually a large tract of unoccupied land. Nor would Parliament have been going beyond the range of its duty in insisting that ground should be reserved for this purpose, since without something of the kind it is impossible properly to compensate the persons who are turned out of their homes. It is universally recognised when Parliament is dealing with persons of a higher class, that public objects are to be pursued with the utmost possible regard for vested interests. Now a vested interest is only an expression for the fact that the measures necessary to attain a particular public object happen to give A. more than his fair share of inconvenience. Every member of the community is bound to make his proportionate sacrifice to the public good, and if the whole burden of the sacrifice is laid upon A., he is just as much injured as though he were subjected to some special tax. We recognise this fact by giving him the value of his interest. Now, when a mass of poor tenants are concerned, their interest in their miserable lodgings hardly admits of being reduced to money. They may be turned out by their landlords at a week's notice, and it has therefore been assumed that to give them a week's rent would make everything straight. But if there are no houses in the neighbourhood for them to move into, this is no compensation at all. They cannot get even as good rooms as those they have been turned out of. If they want to stay on in the same neighbourhood, they must crowd into some house which is already fuller than it ought to be; if they move to a distance, they probably find that they leave their work behind them. It follows from this that any adequate

compensation which can be given them must take the form of a provision of new houses, at a rent not materially greater than that charged for the houses which have been pulled down. Both because Parliament need not consent to these eviction schemes unless it likes, and may consequently sell its consent on its own terms, and because the principle of compensation to vested interests requires that no one man or set of men shall be seriously the worse by reason of any public improvement, it ought in future to be made a condition of all large clearances that the tenants who have been evicted shall have the opportunity of housing themselves at least as well and as conveniently as they have hitherto been able to do. The only consideration which ought to stand in the way would be one founded on the inability of Parliament to turn house-builder. But there is no need for it to do more than decree that proper sites shall be reserved for houses of a particular class. Private or philanthropic enterprise might be trusted to finish the work. As we shall see further on, the acquisition of the site is more than half the battle. There is abundance of money forthcoming to build, provided that the ground on which to build can be had on reasonable terms.

This, then, is all that can be done to diminish overcrowding in the way of direct legislation. Any other measures that may be useful for the same end must have reference to the general condition of the poor, and the best method of improving it. They must be directed to lessen not the evil itself, but the causes which make the poor either less alive to it, or less able to avoid it.

But there is another evil quite as universally distributed, and even more mischievous in its results, which does come within the scope of direct legislation. Parliament can, if it is so minded, enact that every house shall be wholesome. The conditions which make houses, as distinct from situation, wholesome are few and perfectly ascertained. A house must be properly open to the air, it must be provided with sufficient drainage, and it must be secured against the worst forms of damp. In theory, Parliament has the same right to insist on every one of these conditions being satisfied before a house is let or sold for habitation that it has to insist that any other article sold shall be what it professes to be. The law does not allow a baker to sell adulterated bread, or a grocer to sell adulterated sugar, nor is it accepted as a defence that their customers wish to buy bread or sugar at a price too low to allow of their being sold in a pure state. If a shopkeeper wishes to meet the views of this class of customer, he must truly describe the goods sold, and say: This loaf is partly bread and partly potato flour, or, This sugar is brought up to the required weight by the addition of so much sand. This precaution is found sufficient as regards adulteration of food, because the most economical buyers would refuse food, however cheap, which avowed itself to be partly poison. But supposing that the poor could not be trusted to reject poison, supposing that a baker made loaves of some composition which would inevitably generate disease, and, though the fact was plainly stated

on the label affixed to every loaf, continued to find ready purchasers among ignorant or reckless persons, the law would not content itself with insisting that the nature of the composition should be declared to the buyers. It would prohibit the sale altogether; it would declare that, since the poor had not sufficient knowledge or self-control to prevent them from buying poison, in the belief that it would serve the purpose, or must be made to serve the purpose, of wholesome food, they must not have the choice of buying it offered them. All the arguments which apply to the sale of food so adulterated as to be positively poisonous apply with still greater force to the sale and letting of houses so built or arranged as to be positively poisonous. The mischief done is fully as great, for no poison can in the long run do more to injure health and shorten life than the poison conveyed in foul air or damp walls. The inability of the buyer to defend himself against an unprincipled seller is quite as complete, for the causes which make houses unwholesome are not always easy of detection, and even if it were customary to label houses "damp," "undrained," " no ventilation," there would be great risk that the difficulty of finding room, and the desire to pay a low rent, might lead many to let these warnings go unheeded. There is a clear case, then, for the application of the treatment which has been, or under similar circumstances would be, applied to adulteration. Let the law declare that every builder selling a house, and every landlord letting a house, shall be bound to sell or let not merely a house a building consisting of four walls and a roof-but a wholesome house, a house in a fit state to be lived in, a house in which there is a sufficiency of air, and of air such as human beings can breathe with safety, a house in which damp will not give rheumatism, or sewer gas breed fever. If a building fails to satisfy these requirements, it ought not to be ranked as a house; and the sale or letting, for the purpose of habitation, of any building not answering the definition of a house should be made unlawful.

Of course the full operation of such a statute would have to be postponed for some years. But the principle might be at once applied to all new houses; and as regards houses already in existence it might be applied in conjunction with another provision which would make its application very much easier. The suggestion which has lately met with most support from persons anxious to improve the homes of the poor is that the municipal authorities in towns shall be empowered to destroy all houses condemned by the officers of health, to compensate the owners, and to obtain sites by compulsory purchase for the building of new houses to accommodate the inhabitants. So much has lately been said upon the necessity for an Act of this kind, that it need not be demonstrated here. The three facts which make it necessary are the impossibility of improving many of the houses now inhabited by the poor; the natural unwillingness of the municipal authorities to use even their present powers of demolition when there are no means of compensating the owner for the loss of his property; and the legal and financial difficulty of obtaining sites for new