646 
Byzantium not have remained an im- 
perial city. It did fail when, in the 
sixth century, the plague swept away, 
in three months, more inhabitants than 
the city now contains. From that pe- 
riod, disease and desolation have brood- 
ed over this fair portion of the globe, 
and laid it waste. Whence is this change 
of character ?—this translation of cir- 
cumstances ? It is a consequence of des- 
potism. Its foul influence has created 
the elements of disease, and given them 
form. The laws of nature have not 
failed, but a corrupt government has 
perverted them. This very country once 
presented all the blessings man is heir to. 
He laboured in the soil, and was sur- 
rounded with abundance, and satisfied 
with health ; and he must labour still :— 
the sweat of the brow is the price of 
our comfortable existence. Withhold 
the ploughshare from a generous soil, 
and the air becomes pestilential. Were 
the Turks to resume the habits of the 
former inhabitants, the former climate 
would doubtless be restored ; the coun- 
try that once was healthy, may again 
become so. 
Malta had. not known a plague for 
137 years; but, in 1813, the disease 
again appeared. A ship had arrived 
from Alexandria with hare-skins on 
board, among which the plague was 
supposed to have lodged. A thousand 
ships had arrived from infected ports, 
and had communicated no disease; and 
before the hare-skins afe finally con- 
demned, it will be reasonable to in- 
quire, whether some other cause may 
not have originated the complaint? 
Malta was, at this period, a conquered 
country. 
The plague has, at periods of dark- 
ness and oppression, visited almost 
every country of Europe; but with a 
character so uniform, as to render fur- 
ther particularization unnecessary. It 
is, if the expression may be allowed, no 
where indigenous—every country calls 
it foreign, and is offended at the impu- 
tation of giving it birth. The great ques- 
tion that. concerns us is its origin. 
If it be implanted in the constitution, 
and imposed by the mandate of Almighty 
power, our danger is imminent—that 
which is natural cannot be hindered: 
if contagious, no Jaws can protect from 
the venality of some, and the contra- 
band. enterprizes of others ; if natural 
to our constitutions, there can be no 
var to its appearance; but if it be the 
creature of circumstances, this country 
Non-Contagion of Plague. 
ciple of increase would have failed, and. - 
is without danger. And that it is the 
creature of circumstances, I cannot 
advance a stronger or a more important 
proof, than that an amelioration of the 
condition of a people—an improvement 
in their happiness and activity—have, 
in every age, and in every country, kept 
away or destroyed its power: so that, 
in the present enlightened era, it is 
driven within the limits of the Turkish 
empire ; where it awaits the skill of the 
farmer, and the influence of the magis- 
trate, to effect its full and perpetual 
extermination. 
But, until that period shall arrive, it 
will, and ought to be, a subject of grave 
and dispassionate inquiry, whether the 
plague, when it does exist, is infectious? 
and under what circumstances it com- 
municates its poison ? 
In every age, from the first record of 
the disease, men of talent and integrity 
have debated, rather than investigated 
the subject ; and have ranged themselves 
under opposite opinions. Gibbon sneers 
at the physicians of the sixth century, 
for not believing the plague contagious. 
Dr. Mead sneers at some of the physi- 
cians of Marseilles of the eighteenth 
century, because they also discredited 
its infectious power. The Turks, whose 
experience entitles their opinion to at- 
tention, are Noncontagionists, and are 
sneered at by men of an opposite 
opinion. Unfortunately for the sub- 
ject, the disputants have entered upon 
the discussion with biassed minds. One 
class has confined its inquiries to 
tales current in sea-ports—the other, 
to the nature and history of epidemic 
diseases: neither have inquired or rea- 
soned as philosophers. One is satisfied 
if a ship has arrived from an infected 
port—the other, if he can prove that 
the laws which govern some epidemics 
correspond with the laws which govern 
the plague. According to either opinion, 
Europe may again be visited by this 
scourge. An infected garment may be 
clandestinely landed ; or the atmosphere 
may bear upon its bosom the malady.— 
A more liberal and enlarged range of 
inquiry might have harmonized these 
disputants, and have destroyed the 
uncertainty which distresses Europe. 
Both agree in assigning the origin of 
the disease to exhalations from rich, 
uncultivated, swampy land ; both agree, 
that it first attacks the indigent and 
filthy, and merits the title of the poor 
man’s malady; both agree, that in Egypt 
and Syria, if raging with great destruc- 
tiveness up to the 17th, or, at one 
the 
