Tr is not a very grateful task to recur again and again to subjects to which, important as they are, so little attention has hitherto been paid by those in positions of responsibility among us, We referred in our article of the 2ud inst. to the imperative necessity of more stringent regulations being adopted with a view to the proper sanitation of Shanghai, and we uow wish to emphasize and amplify what Wo than wrote. Itisa notorious fact that daring the present winter there thas been an amount of sickness in the Settlement which we have not been accustomed to expect during the old season. Numbers of people have been suffering from low fever, from typhoid fever, and in some enses, we believe, from diphtheria. These disco: attribute to the unhealthy cor ourstrests, and this unhealthy condition of our strecta we attribute to the negligence of our Manicipal authorities, We will go further; we do not hesitate to predict that unless a complete and radical revolution is made in sanitary matters Shanghai will be visited with an epidemic, and that probably daring the next summer. The system, or want of system rather, under which we have boon living hitherto, is discreditable, and if we escape the natural consequences of our neglect it will be duo only to that special Providence which proverbial philosophy assure sus watches over not only children but fools.
The ease, however, serious though it be, is Lappily simple enough. The groat desideratum is that our streets, our houses, and our drains should be Kept clean; and we hesitate to believe that ina matter of such rudimentary importance the Manicipal Council is not invested with sufficient powers Certainly we cannot complain, here i Shanghai, that we are over-governed. Every man is as freely permitted to do that which is right in his own eyes as though he wore an Israelite in the days of the Judges. The Chinese who infest the settlement are allowed to make themeely objectionable and as dangerous to us, the only residents here who have any legal standing, as if they were living in one of their own filthy cities in the interior. There are places in some of our cleanest, best-kept, and most frequented streets where there is a constant stench—a stench which is perceptible every time one passes by—aud which nobody ever dreams of investigating or attempting to remedy. In the back streets the state of affairs is, of course, infinitely worse; ammonia and decayed vegetable-matter are among the least oblectionable things suggested by the odours which impregnate the air. No proper measures, apparently, have over been taken to protect the walls and sidewalks from Chinese desecration, while when we come to the interior of native dwellings, and read the horrible disclosures that have been made from time to time in the reports of medical men, the wonder is that the natives have not been decimated by a plague. Bat it is needless to dwell upon these unsavoury and disgraceful detail What is to be done? We have two officials, paid by the Muuicipality, in whose bands rests a considerable portion of the responsibil lity, These are the Honlth Officer and the Inspector of Nuisances. As regards the former gentleman, we believe that his daties are confined to making periodical Reports to the Municipal Council, and, when occasion may require, sending in a letter on some subject to which at the moment his attention happens to have been drawn. Now the question is, how far does the responsibility of such an officer extend Either be is responsible for seeing that the Settlement is properly sanitated, or he is not, We believe we are daty towards the Munioipnlityisconsidered finished as goon as his Reports are written and sent in, If the Council choose to act upon his well and good; if not, the fault not his, But whosever the responsibility actually is, the fact remains that to a very great extent the reports of the Health Officer are a dend letter and unless & man in this most import. ant position really feels that he is answerable to the public for their due protection from danger, 80 long will he content himself with writing Reports and taking notice of such matters as may be forced apon his attention, Now this sort of thing cannot and must not go on. The qi is too serious altogether to be trifled with, an ing but trifling hitherto, The provisions at present made for our sanitary arrangements are lamentably insufficient, and while ure upon the eminent n who has hitherto performed the duties devolving upon him we strongly condemn the system of which his office forms a part. We therefore propose, as the only scheme at all likely to moot the present necessities, that there shall be established, in connection with the Manicipality, a department to be called the Board of Health, the work of which shall be done by experts, This Board shall have fall Municipal powers, not to report upon, but to deal the sanitary condi of Shang-to combine the duties of the present Health Officer with those of the Inspector of Nuisances; to make regular and periodical visitations of all the houses in the Settlement, for which an efficient staff of assistants would of course be necessary; and to keep constant watch over those matters which affect the welfare and threaten the health of the community. It should be the business of such a Board to find out dangers and put a stop to them, instead of waiting until public opinion is too strong to be resisted: to warn the publi, for instance, that there is danger from cattle.disease, or impure milk, or the vagaries of Chinese wasbermen, and, while doing so, to put down such things as can be put down, with a strong hand. As regards the drainage. system, we could scarcely do better than adopt the excellent suggestions of a Into Correspondent writing under the pseudonym of 'Reform,' who is an expert. Bat it is unnecessary at the present juncture to enter into the details of such matters. What we want to seo is an entire change in the system itself, by which those things shall be dealt with practically and effectively which now are only dealt with perfunctively and feebly. We have hnd several warnings daring the pnst two years that sanitation is not n matter to be played with. The¥o are mon, we know, in Shanghai, who poobpooh such suggestions; who tell us that they have lived here twenty years, and drank the foulest water, and had their linen washed in filth, and resided over a fetid drain—and thriven upon it. These are the obstructives, who prosper in the Innd, and from sheer inertia refuse to believe that the ordinary human stem. ach is not made of iron, The judgment will nevertheless fall upon us unless we use the menns ab our disposal to avert it. The subject cun-not however he exhausted in a single article, and we shall return to it again and again until our representations have had something like the desived effect.
MISSIONARIES PAST AND PRESENT, Taz paper read by the Rev. W. Muirhead before the Shanghai Literary and Debating Society the other was of an eminently suggestive acter, Dealing primarily with the lives and labours of the pioneers of Christanity in China, the lecturer may be said perhaps to have Inid more stress upon the personal excellence and unwearied activity of these bygone wor-thios than upon the actual difficulti surrounding all missionary enterprise in China under any circumstances, and more especially at a time when the people's minds wore utterly and entirely unprepared for such revolutionary ideas as are embodied in the religion from the West. Yet although he did not enlarge at any length upon this part of the subject—which, in fuct, was scarcely comprehended in the scope of his paper—Mr, Muirhead did nevertheless, in a few trenchant and striking sentencer, refer to the tremendous obstacles which the propagators of Christanity cannot but meet with in urging its claims upon the Chinese, We need not dwell upon the biographical sketches which formed the piece de resistance of Mr. Muirbead's lecture, The founders of Protestant Missions in China were in most instances men of humble birth, animated solely by a desir to spread Christianity brondeast among the Chinese, and bringing with them to the work an amount of enthusiasm and a capacity for Inbour meriting the highest
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.