[In the following excerpt, Fraser's Magazine gives its support to the sanitary reform movement under Chadwick. The authors emphasize the importance of sanitary reform to solving many social problems, suggesting that sanitation could take the place of extensive charity efforts for the poor.]

We look forward with much interest, and some impatience, to the appearance of the blue book which is to embody the labours of the new Sanitary Commission. As a general rule, we have little confidence in commissions, unless they contain one man qualified and determined to take the lead. However respectable and intelligent the individual members may be, the inquiry entrusted to them is too apt to degenerate into a series of conversations without aim or point, and the Report to possess too much of that quality which is familiarly known as “milk-and-water.” But the name of Chadwick re-assures us. We call to mind the sanitary reports of 1842 and 1843, and are satisfied. The same vigorous hand which held the pen in Somerset House will guide it in Whitehall. The mysteries of London will be revealed; the secrets of “local self-government” laid open; and that gigantic accident of brick and mortar, the metropolis of England, will be placed before us in all its fantastic proportions. Under the guidance of this modern Asmodeus, we shall be able to take a bird's-eye view of the great city, to track the footsteps of the pestilence which walketh in filth and darkness, and to watch the stealthy inroads of scrofula and consumption in the wretched hovel of the labourer and the crowded workshop of the artisan. We shall learn the secrets of the obstacles that block our thoroughfares, and of the worse impediments which obstruct the flow of the dark streams that own the control of the Commissioners of Sewers. Marylebone shall be stretched upon the rack, and the City groan under the torture; and all the world shall see what sort of a home for two millions of human beings this boasted centre of civilisation is.

We congratulate the public on having once more secured the services of Mr. Chadwick. We thank the government for giving us this earnest of their good intentions; and we felicitate Mr. Chadwick himself on having escaped from the thankless service of a miserable system of palliation to the more genial work of prevention, in which he has already attained to such proficiency. …

Let us sit down, then, with map in hand, and the best authorities, historical, statistical, and sanitary, open before us, and endeavour to form some idea of the metropolis of England, not as a great centre of commerce, not as the gay resort of fashion, the abode of royalty, or the seat of government, but as the home of two millions of human beings. Is it a decent, cleanly, wholesome home? There is but one answer to this question, and that, unhappily, in the negative. London can boast of no superiority—of none, at least, which is not purely accidental—over other large cities. Like them, she has done all she could, by carelessness and negligence, to justify the uncomplimentary epithets with which large towns in general have been assailed. She has been made, or has been suffered to become, one of the “graves of mankind;” a “foul and pestilent congregation of vapours;” a “huge accident of brick and mortar;” and, indeed, any thing and every thing that she ought not to be. It is in vain that she parades her public buildings, and multiplies her statues, and builds up long lines of imposing streets, with gorgeous mansions and glittering shops. We know that this is all treachery and deception,—the mere outside-splendour of the whited sepulchre, concealing revolting scenes of corruption and decay. What are her leading thoroughfares but so many showy screens, run up to hide from sight the manifold nuisances which abound in their immediate vicinity? Her squares, and public places, and fashionable quarters, what are they but oases in a worse than desert? The noisy tide of fickle fashion and bustling trade flows through them, all unconscious of the sad contrasts shut out from view by a narrow barrier of brick and mortar. These highways constitute the town and the world of nine-tenths of the rich and fashionable. “Where are the people?” is a question which not even the example of an emperor can prevail upon them to ask. The people! There is in that idea a bewildering vastness, an oppressive grandeur, an awful sublimity, which brings the frivolous and thoughtless to a sudden pause. Its presence mars enjoyment. It casts too broad and deep a shadow across the path of pleasure. But it will sometimes force an unwilling entrance through the sullen barrier of indifference, startle the sleepy conscience, and arouse the apprehensions of the bravest. The people! What a grand, concrete idea! The passions, the sorrows, the trials, the struggles, the labours, of one man multiplied by millions! The rivulet swollen to the stream, the stream to the river, the river to the mighty ocean!

This idea is, so to speak, embodied in the great town. It assumes a visible and tangible shape. The units of the living sum are brought close together. The population of a county or a kingdom is compressed into the space of a few square miles. This it is which lends to the large city a character of sublimity. It is this which renders a residence amid all its noise and bustle so grateful to men of large and comprehensive views. It was this feeling which possessed Samuel Johnson, when he expressed his indifference to the country and all its quiet attractions, lauded the superior charms of Fleet Street, and gloried in the full tide of human existence flowing through its narrow channel. All honour to the great lexicographer for the human sympathies which made the great metropolis so dear to him! and honour to all those who labour to make it a fit object of interest and attachment!

Let us, then, consider the metropolis in this light, as the dwelling-place of the People,—the scene of their toils, and sufferings, and pleasures,—their work-place, and their home. And again we ask, Is London what it ought to be? Has it been constructed with a view to its proper uses as a place of habitation? Have its streets been so laid out, its workshops, shops, and dwellings, so constructed, and its municipal laws so framed, as to economise to the utmost all those things which are most valuable to its inhabitants—time, temper, money, health, and life? Have suitable provisions been made for the recreation and instruction of the people, for their elevation and refinement? If these questions could any where be answered in the affirmative, it ought to be in this metropolis,—the royal, legal, legislative, commercial, and fashionable centre of the United Kingdom,—the largest and richest city in the world,—the home of two millions of human beings! To every one of these important questions, the answer is an emphatic negative. …

Let us hope that these things have had their day, and that history will record to our honour that, after having for about ten years written much and talked more about the necessity of doing something for the health of the people, and having bandied the matter about in speeches from the throne, debates in the legislature, and abortive acts of parliament; and encountered and tired out the opposition of parish vestries, local boards, and irresponsible commissions; we were permitted at length, about the middle of the nineteenth century, to give an authoritative definition of a house; and that thereupon the era of house-building did commence in earnest, and the people at large were suffered to enjoy the same privilege which the more intelligent among our agriculturists have long awarded to their cattle.

Let us hope, too, that the same veracious chronicler will set forth how, about this time, John Bull, awaking like a giant from a dreamy sleep, became conscious, all at once, of the barbarisms by which he had surrounded himself, and of the barbarities which he had unconsciously perpetrated; how he began to look upon the smoking factory and steamer as a waste of fuel and an intolerable nuisance; on the manure of our towns thrown into the sea as a virtual destruction of his children's food; on the cattle-market, the graveyard, the slaughter-house, the laystall, and the offensive manufactory, planted in the midst of a crowded population, as worthy of the times of gross and unlettered ignorance; how he determined to display that vigour which he had hitherto exercised solely on the battle-field, or on his own peculiar element, against the domestic foes who had combined to poison and oppress his children; and how he had laughed to scorn and put to flight the aiders and abettors of “local self-government,” consolidated the “heptarchy of foul waters,” routed the paving-boards, controlled the water-companies, and brought about that much-desired union of centralisation and parochialism, under whose enlightened and vigilant sway so many blessings had been conferred upon the nation.

From this period of time we are convinced that history will date the commencement of England's real prosperity. Taking a large and comprehensive view of the acts and principles of a bygone age, she will pronounce the one to be the rude efforts of uninstructed and undisciplined vigour, or the happy accidents which strew the path even of thoughtless negligence, and the other as the warm impulses of a generous spirit awaiting the correction of a more mature experience. The charities which, in innocent self-satisfaction, had been paraded before the world as evidence of a rare humanity, will then appear in their true colours as the offspring of a listless indifference, which could only be moved by the contemplation of its own inevitable results; the alms-giving, which had grown into a huge system of temptation to the worthless and encouragement to the idle, will be recognised as the mere letter of the divine law, of which prevention is the spirit; and the gigantic system of compulsory charity, which diverts the wages of labour into the hands of idleness, and holds forth a perpetual temptation to the neglect of the duties of kindred and relationship, will be acknowledged on all hands to have been based upon a principle which Christianity never recognised, and which is directly opposed to the teaching of an inspired apostle. In place of the doctrine that no man shall be permitted to starve, and the cruel tyranny which pronounces that all men, without distinction of character or conduct, have a claim on the fruits of other men's industry, will be substituted those acts of prevention and foresight which will make the want of the necessaries of life an event so rare, that the spontaneous charity of a small fraction of the people will be amply sufficient to meet every real case of destitution; for though we are taught on authority we dare not question, that “the poor shall never cease out the land,” we are nowhere taught that their number does not admit of being reduced from millions to thousands.

For our own part, we are confident that the only sure way to bring the present appalling mass of destitution and crime within reasonable and manageable limits, is by the universal practice of simple and well-considered measures of prevention, and by the gradual, and ultimately complete, disuse of all measures of palliation, which are not properly the province of the State, and not the highest privilege or function even of the Church.

Sanitary Reform, which is alone capable of achieving these great results, is, from first to last, a grand scheme of preventive charity; a practical application, on a large scale, of the soundest principles of humanity and economy. It is neither the dream of an enthusiast nor the panacea of a quack. Its plans are too sober for the one, too multifarious for the other. It opens the view of a new moral world through the agency of a physical reformation. It dispenses the pure elements of nature by the best contrivances of man's ingenuity, and proclaims a universal equality in the enjoyment of air, light, and water. It deals chiefly with the town, because the town stands most in need of improvement, and is most likely to influence the country by its example; and it looks with peculiar interest to this great and growing metropolis, as the best teacher and exemplar of physical improvement, as the centre from which England best fulfils her mission of teaching the nations how to live.

The object of the sanitary movement may be summed up in a few words,—a sewer in every street of every town and village; a drain for every house; a constant and unlimited supply of good water to every family; pure air at any cost; the application of the refuse of towns to the purposes of agriculture; and, lastly, to secure these blessings, the removal of every impediment, physical and moral, and the destruction or reconstruction of every form of local administration which does not work well towards these righteous ends.

That the inhabitants of the metropolis ought not to be excluded from a participation in these good things, no one will be bold enough to deny; that they can miss them, if they are only true to themselves, no one will believe; that the Sanitary Commission will ably plead their cause, we cannot suffer ourselves to doubt; and we are sure that the government is sincerely desirous of conferring upon them the benefit of a good sanitary measure. There will be some local resistance to overcome; but we think that we see signs of repentance in quarters where the outcry against Lord Morpeth's Bill was loudest, and some slight misgiving, which may ripen into a wholesome scepticism, as to the virtues of unmitigated local self-government. If this repentance and this misgiving really exist, the revelations of the new Sanitary Commission cannot fail of giving strength to these feelings. But if, unhappily, we are mistaken, and the old opposition to Sanitary Reform is to be revived, let no one forget at what cost of health, life, and money the luxury of resistance must be purchased. Ten thousand lives, a quarter of a million cases of unnecessary sickness, and waste or misapplication of some three millions of money, is the heavy tax which the inhabitants of London will be called upon to pay every year to parochial perverseness and municipal mismanagement. Let the rate-payers look to it. We are pleading their cause. Let the working-classes lay it to heart, for they may rest assured that they are more interested in Sanitary Reform than in any or all of the nostrums with which political quacks love to perplex and tantalize them.