Edwin Chadwick has not yet received ordinary justice from his contemporaries.  Though he has been one of the most indefatigable and successful workers of the age, and has greatly influenced the legislation of his time, he is probably less known than many a fourth-rate parliamentary talker.

Mr. Chadwick belongs to a Lancashire family, and was born near Manchester.  He received his education chiefly in London.  Having chosen the law for his profession, he was enrolled a student of the Inner Temple in his twenty-sixth year.  There he “ate his way” to the Bar; maintaining himself by reporting and writing for the daily press.  He was not a man of an extraordinary amount of learning.  But he was a sagacious and persevering man.  He was ready to confront any amount of labour in prosecuting an object, no matter how remote its attainment might at first sight appear to be.

At an early period in his career, Edwin Chadwick became possessed by an idea.  It is a great thing to be thoroughly possessed by an idea, provided its aim and end be beneficent.  It gives a colour and bias to the whole of a man’s life.  The idea was not a new one; but being taken up by an earnest, energetic, and hard-working man, there was some hope for the practical working out of his idea in the actual life of humanity.  It was neither more nor less than the Sanitary Idea,—­the germ of the sanitary movement.

We must now briefly state how he worked his way to its practical realization.  It appears that Mr. Morgan, the Government actuary, had stated before a parliamentary committee, that though the circumstances of the middle classes had improved, their “expectation of life” had not lengthened.  This being diametrically opposed to our student’s idea, he endeavoured to demonstrate the fallacy of the actuary’s opinion.  He read up and sifted numerous statistical documents,—­Blue Books, life-tables, and population-tables.  He bored his way through the cumbrous pile, and brought an accumulation of facts from the most unlooked-for quarters, for the purpose of illustrating his idea, and elucidating his master-thought.

The result was published in the Westminster Review for April, 1828.  Mr. Chadwick demonstrated, by an immense array of facts and arguments, that the circumstances which surround human beings must have an influence upon their health; that health must improve with an improvement of these circumstances; that many of the diseases and conditions unfavourable to human life were under man’s control, and capable of being removed; that the practice of vaccination, the diminution of hard drinking amongst the middle and upper classes, the increase of habits of cleanliness, the improvements in medical science, and the better construction of streets and houses, must, according to all medical and popular experience, have contributed, a priori, to lengthen life; and these he proved by a citation of facts from numerous authentic sources.  In short, Mr. Morgan was wrong.  The “expectancy of life,” as is now universally admitted, has improved and is rapidly improving amongst the better classes; but it was never thoroughly demonstrated until Edwin Chadwick undertook the discussion of the question.