great thing can ever be accomplished without an immense amount of
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abuse being heaped upon it. In connexion with the Board of Health
we are always hearing a very large word which is always pronounced
with a very great relish – the word centralization. Now I submit
that in the time of the cholera we had a pretty good opportunity of
judging between this so called centralization and what I may, I
think, call “vestrylisation.” I dare say the company present have
read the reports of the Cholera Board of Health, and I daresay they
have also read reports of certain vestries. I have the honour of
belonging to a constituency which elected that amazing body, the
Marylebone vestry, and I think that if the company present will
look to what was done by the Board of Health at Glasgow, and then
contrast those proceedings with the wonderful cleverness with which
affairs were managed at the same period by my vestry, there will be
very little difficulty in judging between them. My vestry even
took upon itself to deny the existence of cholera as a weak
invention of the enemy, and that denial had little or no effect in
staying the progress of the disease. We can now contrast what
centralization is as represented by a few noisy and interested
gentlemen, and what centralization is when worked out by a body
combining business habits, sound medical and social knowledge, and
an earnest sympathy with the sufferings of the working classes.
Another objection to the Board of Health is conveyed in a word not
so large as the other, – “Delay.” I would suggest, in respect to
this, that it would be very unreasonable to complain that a firstrate
chronometer didn’t go when its master had not wound it up.
The Board of Health may be excellently adapted for going and very
willing and anxious to go, and yet may not be permitted to go by
reason of its lawful master having fallen into a gentle slumber and
forgotten to set it a going. One of the speakers this evening has
referred to Lord Castlereagh’s caution “not to halloo until they
were out of the wood.” As regards the Board of Trade I would
suggest that they ought not to halloo until they are out of the
Woods and Forests. In that leafy region the Board of Health
suffers all sorts of delays, and this should always be borne in
mind. With the toast of the Board of Health I will couple the name
of a noble lord (Ashley), of whose earnestness in works of
benevolence, no man can doubt, and who has the courage on all
occasions to face the cant which is the worst and commonest of all
– the cant about the cant of philanthropy.
SPEECH: GARDENING. LONDON, JUNE 9, 1851.
[At the anniversary dinner of the Gardeners’ Benevolent
Institution, held under the presidency of Mr., afterwards Sir
Joseph Paxton, Mr. Charles Dickens made the following speech:-]
I FEEL an unbounded and delightful interest in all the purposes and
associations of gardening. Probably there is no feeling in the
human mind stronger than the love of gardening. The prisoner will
make a garden in his prison, and cultivate his solitary flower in
the chink of a wall. The poor mechanic will string his scarlet
bean from one side of his window to the other, and watch it and
tend it with unceasing interest. It is a holy duty in foreign
countries to decorate the graves of the dead with flowers, and
here, too, the resting-places of those who have passed away from us
will soon be gardens. From that old time when the Lord walked in
the garden in the cool of the evening, down to the day when a Poet-
Laureate sang –
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“Trust me, Clara Vere de Vere,
From yon blue heaven above us bent
The gardener Adam and his wife
Smile at the claims of long descent,”
at all times and in all ages gardens have been amongst the objects
of the greatest interest to mankind. There may be a few, but I