8
of America has been in promoting that of the sovereign people of the "Model Republic." I make no mere random statement in asserting this truth, as you must admit when you have digested the unpalatable facts contained in the following paragraph, which I copy from the New York Courier:—
"In England, where if progress is slow it is always sure, the best results have attended the observing of sanitary provisions. There the value of human life is better appreciated than it is here, and the duty of doing all that lies within the reach of human means for preserving it is fully acknowledged. … In looking at the rate of mortality in our own country, it will be found that there is much work to be done. "We have grossly neglected the laws of health, and have ignored the obvious results obtained in England. Instead of lengthening the average term of life in our cities, we have shortened it. In Philadelphia the average term of life between the years 1810 and 1820 was 26. From 1820 to 1844 it was 22 years, and in 1857 it was 20 years only. In Boston, between the years 1810 and 1820, it was 27 years; from 1820 to 1844 it was 21 years, and in 1857 it was but 20 years. In this city (New York), from 1810 to 1820 it was 26 years; in 1821 it was 21 years; in 1843 it was 19 years; and now the average term is only about 15 years."
So great an increase in the rate of mortality in the three largest, wealthiest, and most influential cities of the Union, is a terrible fact, and one that involves some very important conclusions. Observe, too, that this frightful deterioration of the public health, this wholesale destruction of human life, has been going forward with steady pace from year-to year among a people for whose education the most lavish provision has been made. "In the cities of Boston, New York, and Philadelphia, more money, in proportion to the population, is raised by taxation, for the support of common schools, than in any other cities in the world."[1] Nor is there any lack of means to provide everything that is needful for the preservation and improvement of the public health. The annual
- ↑ The "Fourth of July Oration," pronounced in the City Hall, Boston, before the municipal authorities, by the Hon. Edward Everett.—New York Tribune, July, 1860.
