an fulminate
against them; and if it can be shown, which it has been by our best and
latest reports, that Cholera Morbus eminently and indisputably belongs
to that class--that the strictest cordons of armed men could not avail
to save the towns of the continent, nor the strictest quarantine our
own shores, from its invasion--it surely must be time to cease those
vain attempts, to lay down the arms that have proved so useless, and
turn our undivided attention, now that it has fairly got amongst us,
to conservative police, and the treatment of the disease; but as the
contagionists still insist that it was imported from Hamburgh to
Sunderland, it behoves us to clear away this preliminary difficulty
before proceeding to other points of the enquiry.

I take it for granted, that ships proceeding from Sunderland to Hamburgh
could only be colliers, and that according to the custom of such
vessels, they returned, as they do from the port of London, light; and I
admit, that on or about the time of their return, Cholera Morbus, under
the severe form which characterises the Asiatic disease, made its
appearance in that port, presenting a fair _prima facie_ case of
imported contagion; but as at the period of its thus breaking out in
Sunderland, a case equally as fatal and severe shewed itself, according
to the public accounts, in the upper part of Newcastle, 10 miles off;
another equally well-marked, in a healthy quarter in Edinburgh; a third,
not long before in Rugby, in the very centre of the kingdom; and a
fourth in Sunderland itself, as far back as the month of August, as
well as many others in different parts of the country;[23] it became
incumbent on the quarantine authorities, indeed upon all men interested
in the question, whether contagionists or otherwise, to shew the true
state of these vessels, as well as of the cases above alluded to, and
whether the Cholera Morbus had ever been on board of them, either at
Hamburgh or during the homeward voyage, so as by any possibility they
could have introduced the disease into an English port. Now will any
person pretend to say that this has been done, or that it could not have
been done, or deny that it was a measure, which, if properly executed,
would have thrown light upon the true character of the disease, not only
for the information of our own government but of every government in
Europe; that deputations from the Board of Health, backed and supported
by all the power and machin