76 Notes of the Month on [JAN. 



carried with them on their return into their southern cantonments. To 

 this moment there is even no decision whether it is contagious or epi- 

 demic. 



Humboldt has attempted a narrative of its progress. He conceives it 

 to have begun in 1818 in Bombay, from which it passed, in 1819, to 

 the Mauritius and Madagascar; at Bassora it was first felt in 1821. It 

 then traversed Syria, where it apparently decayed during three years, 

 though in the mean time it had ravaged the whole northern border of 

 Africa. In 1823, it was felt on the coasts of the Caspian; and with 

 peculiar mortality at Astracan. In 1829, it was felt in Persia, from 

 which it came into Georgia, where in one city of 50,000 people but 

 8,000 survived. In 1830, it was felt again at Astracan, in the month of 

 July, when it destroyed 21,000 people, with almost the entire of the 

 officers of government. From this it spread among the Cossacks of the 

 Don,, and finally reached Moscow. Here it was peculiarly formidable ; 

 it seemed to defy medicine, and the computation was, that one in three 

 of the attacked died. The Russian settlements on the Black Sea could 

 scarcely hope to escape, and it had appeared with great violence at 

 Odessa. It was also said to have stretched to the neighbourhood of 

 Constantinople. 



In this narrative a great deal is probably fanciful, and in that spirit 

 of theory and classification which makes Humboldt, and all his country- 

 men, such extremely doubtful authorities on physical questions. He 

 has evidently pressed all the periodic disorders of those hot and un- 

 healthy countries into the service, and has regimented them under the 

 name of cholera. We must wait until some Englishmen of science, 

 and what is of no less importance, of accuracy, shall have examined the 

 disease on the spot. From the cordons which Austria is forming on the 

 borders of Gallicia, we must presume that the disorder is contagious; 

 for every one knows the absurdity of resisting the cholera by muskets 

 and bayonets. But if contagious, which it in all probability is, and 

 caught from the Turks, we cannot take too immediate precautions 

 against this new visitation of the plague, of all diseases the most hideous, 

 and which, if once suffered to make its way over Germany, will inevi- 

 tably spread over the whole extent of the continent. By preventing its 

 entrance at our seaports, we may be safe ; but, for this national pur- 

 pose, too great vigilance cannot be exerted, nor too great attention 

 paid to every advance which it may make on the continent. 



There can be doubt that a great deal of the distress of the peasantry, 

 and, in consequence, a great deal of their insubordination, have arisen 

 from their want of any thing which might be called a stake in the land. 

 The old custom of providing the labourer with ground, however trifling 

 its extent might be, gave him a feeling that he belonged to the country, 

 and had duties to fulfil as an Englishman. But the grasping and short- 

 sighted system of refusing land to the cottager, while it was thrown into 

 large farms, and men were displaced for sheep, necessarily produced a 

 total alienation in the men thus thrown out, and we can have nothing 

 new to learn in the intelligence, that they looked on these masters as 

 their enemies. By this system, the whole labouring population would 

 in a few years have perished, or become a loose mob, roving from place 

 to place for employment, or, when employment failed, for plunder, 

 and inclined to take a part in every public disorder. On this system 



