432
Kingston 122
Staines 82
Chertsey 18
Windsor 103
_cum aliis._[230]

Another thing might render the country more strict with respect to the
citizens, and especially with respect to the poor, and this was what I
hinted at before; namely, that there was a seeming propensity, or a
wicked inclination, in those that were infected, to infect others.

There have been great debates among our physicians as to the reason of
this. Some will have it to be in the nature of the disease, and that it
impresses every one that is seized upon by it with a kind of rage and a
hatred against their own kind, as if there were a malignity, not only in
the distemper to communicate itself, but in the very nature of man,
prompting him with evil will, or an evil eye, that as they say in the
case of a mad dog, who, though the gentlest creature before of any of
his kind, yet then will fly upon and bite any one that comes next him,
and those as soon as any, who have been most observed[231] by him
before.

Others placed it to the account of the corruption of human nature,
who[232] cannot bear to see itself more miserable than others of its own
species, and has a kind of involuntary wish that all men were as unhappy
or in as bad a condition as itself.

Others say it was only a kind of desperation, not knowing or regarding
what they did, and consequently unconcerned at the danger or safety, not
only of anybody near them, but even of themselves also. And indeed, when
men are once come to a condition to abandon themselves, and be
unconcerned for the safety or at the danger of themselves, it cannot be
so much wondered that they should be careless of the safety of other
people.

But I choose to give this grave debate quite a different turn, and
answer it or resolve it all by saying that I do not grant the fact. On
the contrary, I say that the thing is not really so, but that it was a
general complaint raised by the people inhabiting the outlying villages
against the citizens, to justify, or at least excuse, those hardships
and severities so much talked of, and in which complaints both sides may
be said to have injured one another; that is to say, the citizens
pressing to be received and harbored in time of distress, and with the
plague upon them, complain of the cruelty and injustice of the country
people in being refused entrance, and forced ba