ne
would accuse him of under-rating the evils of war, but he questioned
whether the most sanguinary battle which had ever been fought carried
off nearly as many human beings as die in England every year from
purely preventible causes. He threw the whole force of his clear and
penetrating intellect into such questions as sanitary reform, the
regulation of mines, the promotion of education and especially
technical education, the organisation of charities, the treatment of
juvenile offenders, the diffusion of wise methods of encouraging
saving among the poor. The overcrowding of the great cities, and the
vast masses of insanitary dwellings, seemed to him one of the most
pressing dangers of the time, and he was a prominent member of nearly
every important company and association in England for improving the
houses of artisans. He had no puritanism in his nature and was very
anxious, by the establishment of free libraries and people's parks,
and Sunday opening of museums, to extend the range of innocent
pleasure. 'Men die,' he once said, 'for want of cheerfulness, as
plants die for want of light.' He did not believe in the repression of
drunkenness by coercive legislation like the Local Veto Bill, but he
believed that its true root lay in overcrowding, ignorance, insanitary
conditions of life, the want of innocent means of enjoyment, excessive
hours of labour. 'When you have to deal with men in masses,' he said,
'the connection between vice and disease is very close. With a low
average of popular health you will have a low average of national
morality and probably also of national intellect. Drunkenness and
vice of other kinds will flourish on such a soil, and you cannot get
healthy brains to grow on unhealthy bodies. Cleanliness and
self-respect grow together, and it is no paradox to affirm that you
tend to purify men's thoughts and feelings when you purify the air
they breathe.' He supported liberally the movement for establishing
coffee-houses, and he looked with great hope to the co-operative
movement as averting or mitigating industrial conflicts. 'The subject
of co-operation,' he said, 'is in my judgment more important as
regards the future of England than nine-tenths of those which are
discussed in Parliament, and around which political controversies
gather.' As the possessor of one of the largest properties in England
he was excellently informed on all agricultural questions, and he
exercised a great influence upon t