They will pay directly and at once, in the saving of poor-rates.
They will pay by exterminating epidemics, and numberless chronic
forms of disease which now render thousands burdens on the public
purse; consumers, instead of producers of wealth. They will pay
by gradually absorbing the dangerous classes; and removing from
temptation and degradation a generation yet unborn. They will pay
in the increased content, cheerfulness, which comes with health in
increased goodwill of employed towards employers. They will pay
by putting the masses into a state fit for education. They will
pay, too, in such fearful times as these, by the increased
physical strength and hardihood of the town populations. For it
is from the city, rather than from the country, that our armies
must mainly be recruited. Not only is the townsman more ready to
enlist than the countryman, because in the town the labour market
is most likely to be overstocked; but the townsman actually makes
a better soldier than the countryman. He is a shrewder, more
active, more self-helping man; give him but the chances of
maintaining the same physical strength and health as the
countryman, and he will support the honour of the British arms as
gallantly as the Highlander or the Connaughtman, and restore the
days when the invincible prentice-boys of London carried terror
into the heart of foreign lands. In all ages, in all times,
whether for war or for peace, it will pay. The true wealth of a
nation is the health of her masses.

It may seem to some here that I have dealt too much throughout
this lecture with merely material questions; that I ought to have
spoken more of intellectual progress; perhaps, as a clergyman,
more also of spiritual and moral regeneration.