out in active mischief, the wise physician will trouble his head
little with the particular accident which woke up the sleeping
disease. The disease was there, and if one thing had not awakened
it some other would. And so, if the population of a great city
have got into a socially diseased state, it matters little what
shock may have caused it to explode. Politics may in one case,
fanaticism in another, national hatred in a third, hunger in a
fourth--perhaps even, as in Byzantium of old, no more important
matter than the jealousy between the blue and the green
charioteers in the theatre, may inflame a whole population to
madness and civil war. Our business is not with the nature of the
igniting spark, but of the powder which is ignited.

I will not, then, to begin, go as far as some who say that "A
great city is a great evil." We cannot say that Bristol was in
1830 or is now, a great evil. It represents so much realised
wealth; and that, again, so much employment for thousands. It
represents so much commerce; so much knowledge of foreign lands;
so much distribution of their products; so much science, employed
about that distribution.

And it is undeniable, that as yet we have had no means of rapid
and cheap distribution of goods, whether imports or manufactures,
save by this crowding of human beings into great cities, for the
more easy despatch of business. Whether we shall devise other
means hereafter is a question of which I shall speak presently.
Meanwhile, no man is to be blamed for the existence, hardly even
for the evils, of great cities. The process of their growth has
been very simple. They have gathered themselves round abbeys and
castles, for the sake of protection; round courts, for the sake of