street is exceptionally fortunate in the number
of people who are properly housed within it.

For twenty-two years it has been sought
to force upon capitalists and the charitable, the
crying need of working people for better homes.
Much has been done, much has been written
and spoken, and it has been demonstrated by
Mr. Alderman Waterlow, that investments of
this character, besides hugely benefiting the
tenant, may be made as remunerative as many
other descriptions of house property. The
following figures show what had been done, up
to the end of 1865, by the model cottages and
buildings which receive, and merit high praise:

After some necessary formalities, the local
authorities will be compelled to erect proper
dwellings in the place of those condemned, and to
borrow the necessary funds from the Public Works
Loan Commissioners. Interest at the rate of
three and a half per cent is to be charged, and
the entire sum of capital and interest is to be
repaid in yearly instalments of equal amounts, in
a period not exceeding thirty years. The
essence of Mr. Torrens's scheme is, that it is
compulsory. The fever-nests of which Dr.
Jeafferson writes, and which have been
described in these pages, would be at once rooted
out; for, neither vested interests, nor the
purblind obstinacy of parish magnates, would be
allowed to interfere with the common good.
The streets, courts, and alleys from which the
fever taint never departs, and which family after
family only occupy to die, would be promptly
condemned and destroyed. The horrible state
of things we saw in Pye-street would be impossible,
and the poor man's sweet home would be a
reality instead of a bitter sham. Happily, it has
been shown that this result can be arrived at
without pecuniary loss; for, as the late Prince
Consort shrewdly remarked, " Unless we can get
seven or eight per cent, we shall not succeed in
inducing builders to invest their capital in such
houses," and a low rate of interest would be
equally unpalatable to corporate bodies. But
that double the amount to be paid for the loan
can be easily obtained under proper management,
Mr. Alderman Waterlow has shown; and an
experiment tried by the corporation of the City of
London is an important testimony in the same
direction. In 1851, the Court of Common
Council decided that the "Finsbury Estate
Surplus Fund," amounting in round numbers to
forty thousand five hundred pounds, should be
expended in providing improved lodging-houses
for the labouring poor. After some years' delay
a piece of freehold land was purchased in the
Farringdon-road for sixteen thousand pounds,
upon which a stately pile of buildings has been
erected at a further cost of thirty-six thousand
pounds. The average cost per room here
amounted to sixty pounds, or twenty pounds
more than similar rooms have been built for
elsewhere; for, as the corporation only aimed at
a dividend of five per cent, a greater sum was
spent in external splendour than at Langbourn-
buildings, where rooms of equal internal comfort
were erected for forty pounds, or at Cromwell-
buildings, where they cost forty-four pounds; and
this concession to architectural display, without
adding to the real comfort of the tenants, makes
the difference between a return of five per cent,
and a return of seven or eight per cent on the
capital laid out.

Of the ownership and management of the
dwellings to be built under Mr. Torrens's act,
if it becomes law, the local officers, the income
and expenditure, the auditing of accounts, and
the power of making by-laws for letting and
occupation, it is unnecessary to speak here.
Ample provision for all these requisites is made
in the bill now before the House, but it is sufficient
for our present purpose to record the fact
that a manful attempt is being made to cope
with a great national sin, and an urgent national
danger. The labouring population of large
towns is decimated, year by year, by diseases