SHOOTING    NIAGARA	197
government in the latter 'seventies. In the course of five years this
administration of rich hereditary peers and landowners passed
legislation which, though little.noticed at the time, struck at the
roots of the Benthamite thesis that the individual should be left
free to enrich himself as he chose. Factory acts were extended and
consolidated and the hours^1 and conditions of labour codified
The process of private enclosure was reversed—though too late
to save more than a fragment of what once had been public
property—and the conversion of common land forbidden
unless it conferred a public as well as a private benefit. By the
Public Health Act of 1876 the interests of the individual were
first subordinated to the requirements of public sanitation. It
was only a beginning. Defending a policy which he described as
"Sanitas sanitatum, omnia sanitas" Disraeli replied to the con-
temptuous attacks of those who felt he was reducing statecraft
to a mere affair of sewerage:
"It must be obvious to all who consider the condition of
the multitude with a desire to improve and elevate it, that
no important step can be gained unless your effect some
reduction of their hours of labour and humanise their toil.
. . . I ventured to say a short time ago that the health of the
people was the most important subject for a statesman. It
is a large subject. It has many branches. It involves the
state of the dwellings of the people, the moral consequences
of which are not less considerable than the physical. It
involves their enjoyment of some of the chief elements of
nature—air, light, and water. It involves the regulation of
their industry, the inspection of their toil. It involves the
purity of their provisions, and it touches upon all the means
by which you may wean them from habits of excess and
brutality. . . . Well it may be the policy of sewerage to a
Liberal Member of Parliament. But to one of the labouring
multitude of England, who has found fever always to be
one of the inmates of his household—who has, year after
year, seen stricken down the children of his loins on whose
sympathy and support he has looked with hope and con-
fidence, it is not a policy of sewerage but a question of life
and death."
^1 Limited by an Act of 1874 to $6 hours a week, 10 on five weekdays and not more
than 6 on Saturdays.
E.S.	.	°