to
them, with due care at least for the public health. The local
authorities should take upon themselves, the lighting, cleansing, paving,
supplying with water, and the like. For private individuals there
remains the most important part of the task, namely, the building of an
improved class of small houses. In this good work the employers of
labour may be expected to come prominently forward. Many a man will
speculate in all kinds of remote undertakings; and it will never occur to
him that one of the most admirable uses to which he might put his spare
capital, would be to provide fit dwelling places for the labouring
population around him. He is not asked to build alms houses. On the
contrary, let him take care to ensure, as far as he can, a good return
for the outlay, in order to avoid what may, possibly, be an unjust
interference with other men's property; and also, and chiefly, that his
building for the poor may not end in an isolated act of benevolence, but
may indicate a mode of employing capital likely to be followed by others.
In the present state of things, the rents of small houses are
disproportionately high because of the difficulty and uncertainty of
collecting the rents for them; but by any improvement you introduce into
the habits of the occupiers of such houses, you make this difficulty and
uncertainty less; and thereby diminish rents. And thus, in this case, as
in many others, physical and moral improvement go on acting and reacting
upon each other. It is likely, too, that these poor people will pay with
readiness and punctuality even a higher rent, if it be for a really good
tenement, than a small one for a place which they must inhabit in the
midst of filth, discomfort, and disease, and therefore with carelessness
and penury. Besides; the rents they pay now, will be found, I believe,
sufficient to reimburse the capitalist for an outlay which would suffice
to build tenements of a superior description to the present ones.

I do not mean to say that the beginners of such a system of employing
capital might not have a great deal to contend with: and it is to their
benevolence, and not to any money motives, that I would mainly appeal.
The devout feeling which in former days raised august cathedrals
throughout the land, might find an employment to the full as religious in
building a humble row of cottages, if they tell of honour to the great
Creator, in care for those whom he has bidden us to care fo