r the island." Now there is every reason to believe that a reference
to the documents from Ceylon will shew that no report as to the
importation of the disease was ever drawn up, for Drs. Farrel and Davy,
as well as Messrs. Marshall, Nicholson, and others, who served in that
island, are, to this hour, clearly against contagion. But as the writer
tells us that he is furnished with unpublished documents respecting the
cholera at St. Petersburg, by the chief of the medical department of the
quarantine in this country, we do not think it necessary to say one word
more--_ex pede Herculem_.

I rejoice to observe that Dr. James Johnson has, at last, _spoken out_
upon the quarantine question; and I trust that others will now follow
his example. It is only to be regretted, that a gentleman possessing
such influence with the public as Dr. Johnson does, should have so long
with-held his powerful aid on the occasion; but his motives were, I am
quite sure, most conscientious; and I believe that he, as well as
others, might have been prevented by a feeling of delicacy from going
beyond a certain point.

Since my last letter a code of regulations, in the anticipation of
cholera, has been published by the Board of Health. _Let our prayers be
offered up with fervency tenfold greater than before, that our land may
not be afflicted with this dire malady._ The following statement,
however, may not be altogether useless at this moment. According to the
_Journal des Debats_ of the 24th instant, the Emperor of Austria, in a
letter to his High Chancellor, dated Schoenbrunn, October 10th, and
published in the _Austrian Observer_ of the 12th, formally makes the
most magnanimous declaration to his people, THAT HE HAD COMMITTED AN
ERROR IN ADOPTING THE VEXATIOUS AND WORSE-THAN USELESS QUARANTINE AND
CORDON REGULATIONS AGAINST CHOLERA; that he did so before the nature of
the disease was so fully understood; admits that those regulations have
been found, after full experience, to have produced consequences more
calamitous than those arising from the disease itself ("_plus funeste
encore que les maux que provenaient de la maladie elle-meme_.") He
kindly makes excuses for still maintaining a modified quarantine system
at certain points, in consequence, as he states, of the opinions still
existing in the dominions of some of his neighbours, _for otherwise his
commercial relations would be broken off. To secure his maritime
intercourse, he must do as t