here is the advantage of having people's eyes
open, when seeing they will not perceive, and hearing they will
not understand? Nothing was wanting to complete our situation but
the addition of physical evil to our moral plague, and that is
come in the shape of the cholera, which broke out at Sunderland a
few days ago. To meet the exigency Government has formed another
Board of Health, but without dissolving the first, though the
second is intended to swallow up the first and leave it a mere
nullity. Lord Lansdowne, who is President of the Council, an
office which for once promises not to be a sinecure, has taken
the opportunity to go to Bowood, and having come up (sent for
express) on account of the cholera the day it was officially
declared really to be that disease, he has trotted back to his
house in the country.

[3] [Riots broke out with great violence at Bristol on the
29th of October, the pretext being the entry of Sir
Charles Wetherell into that city (of which he was
Recorder), who was notorious for his violent opposition
to the Reform Bill. Much property was destroyed, and
many lives lost.]

November 14th, 1831 {p.210}

For the last two or three days the reports from Sunderland about
the cholera have been of a doubtful character. The disease makes
so little progress that the doctors begin again to doubt whether
it is the Indian cholera, and the merchants, shipowners, and
inhabitants, who suffer from the restraints imposed upon an
infected place, are loudly complaining of the measures which have
been adopted, and strenuously insisting that their town is in a
more healthy state than usual, and that the disease is no more
than what it always is visited with every year at this season. In
the meantime all preparations are going on in London, just as if
the disorder was actually on its way to the metropolis. We have a
Board at the Council Office, between which and the Board at the
College some civilities have passed, and the latter is now ready
to yield up its functions to the former, which, however, will not
be regularly constituted without much difficulty and many
jealousies, all owing to official carelessness and mismanagement.
The Board has been diligently employed in drawing up suggestions
and instructions to local boards and parochial authorities, and
great activity has prevailed here in establishing committees for
the purpose of visiting the differ