SOURCE: “Supply of Water to the Metropolis.” Edinburgh Review 91 (April 1850): 403.

In the following excerpt, the author argues that sanitation is an issue touching all classes, although Christian charity requires the higher classes to help improve the squalid conditions of the poor.

The statesman, in the pride of conscious power, while by the magic of his words he bends the assembled Commons to his will, is the prey of an influence subtler than his own. When the strong excitement of the hour has passed away, the unstrung nerves, the feverish pulse, the throbbing head, may warn him, when it is too late, that a heavy vapour from the pestilential courts of Westminster had glided into the presence of the rulers of the land, and had been busy at its appointed work. Even in that rich and glorious chamber where the Queen meets the Peers of England, and where the...