accountably as it began,--attacking, weeks after, the
previously unscathed division of the army, or not attacking it at all
at the time, yet returning at a distant interval, when all traces of the
former epidemic had ceased, and committing the same devastation. Now,
will any man, not utterly blinded by prejudice, candidly reviewing
these facts, pretend to say, that this could be a personal contagion,
cognizable by, and amenable to, any of the known or even supposable laws
of infection--that the hundreds of the night infected one another, or
that the thousands of the few days owed their disease to personal
communication,--as well affect to believe that the African Simoon, which
prostrates the caravan, and leaves the bones of the traveller to whiten
in the sandy desert, could be a visitation of imported pestilence.

It may then be asked, have we no protection against this fearful plague?
No means of warding it off? Certainly none against its visitation! It
will come--it will go; we can neither keep it out, or retain it, if we
wished, amongst us. The region of its influence is above us and beyond
our controul; and we might as well pretend to arrest the influx of the
swallows in summer, and the woodcocks in the winter season, by cordons
of troops and quarantine regulations, as by such means to stay the
influence, of an atmospheric poison; but in our moral courage, in our
improved civilization, in the perfecting of our medical and health
police, in the generous charitable spirit of the higher orders,
assisting the poorer classes of the community, in the better condition
of those classes themselves, compared with the poor of other countries,
and in the devoted courage and assistance of the medical profession
every where, we shall have the best resources. Trusting to these, it has
been found that, in countries far less favoured than ours, wherever the
impending pestilence has only threatened a visitation, there the panic
has been terrible, and people have even died of fear; but when it
actually arrived, and they were obliged to look it in the face, they
found, that by putting their trust in what I have just laid down, they
were in comparative safety; that, the destitute, the uncleanly, above
all, the intemperate and the debauched, were almost its only victims;
that the epidemic poison, whatever it might be, had strength to prevail
only against those who had been previously unnerved by fear, or weakened
by debauchery; and that m