88 Notes of the Month on Affairs in General. [^July, 



100/. each, to appear at the next general quarter sessions for the county of 

 Surrey." 



The curious part of the case is, who pays ? That many a man is 

 blind to the future, and contemptuous of the inside of a prison, or may 

 be amused with defying judge and jury, or may dream of the downfal 

 of an archbishop, is now as obvious as that the Tories are turned out. 

 But how is all this disbursed ? for law must be paid ; the walls of a 

 prison will feed no man; judges and juries are among the most costly 

 luxuries of life ; and the best dream of episcopal subversion since the 

 days of Jack Cade, is not worth a substantial sixpence. Who pays for 

 the Reverend Robert's campaigns ? We have heard something on the 

 subject, which we may yet put into tangible shape. 



Great and very just anxiety has been excited by the ravages of the new 

 plague — the cholera, in the north of Europe. It is not for us to fathom 

 the ways of Providence ; nor to pronounce that this scourge has fallen 

 upon the Continent for its crimes — first smiting Russia, red with the 

 blood of an unprovoked war against the Turks, and at this hour heaping 

 gore on gore, and crime on crime, by her attempts to repress the freedom 

 of a brave and most injured people. There can be no doubt that the 

 cholera has hitherto fought for Poland — that the Russian councils have 

 been distracted by it — the Russian armies struck with terror by it — and 

 the numbers of those brutal instruments of a despot's purpose fearfully 

 thinned by its wide-wasting fury. We have no Russian hospital list — 

 no gazette — to tell us of the thousands perishing night by night in the 

 swamps of Poland, without medicine, physicians, or food. 



But we have unequivocal evidence of the havoc of the cholera, in the 

 universal check of the Russian armies ; in their sudden pause, when 

 nothing seemed to stand between them and Warsaw ; in their sudden 

 inability to move after victory ; and the extraordinary timidity, vacilla- 

 tion, and ill success which have marked a campaign that once threatened 

 the total extinction of the Polish name. 



The scourge has fallen on Poland, too, but evidently in an inferior 

 degree, and the suffering is well recompensed by the indemnity ; for no 

 plague could lie so dreadful as the fury of the Russian sword, followed 

 by the long bitterness of the Russian chain. Other kingdoms may yet 

 share in the infliction. It seems scarcely possible, that the cholera can 

 be prevented from spreading through the greater part of the Continent. 

 Perhaps, it may reach ourselves. But much may be expected from the 

 cleanly habits of the people, to repel any peculiar virulence of an epi- 

 demic ; much from the excellent food of England ; and much from her 

 medical science ; — three things in which all the countries hitherto devas- 

 tated by this plague have been singularly deficient. In India, excepting 

 the stations of the Company's troops — in Persia — in the Russian pro- 

 vinces on the Caspian — in the government of JMoscow — in the wild 

 provinces of Poland — the habits, the food, and even the slight portion of 

 medical science, tend rather to propagate the poison than to extinguish 

 it. There every village fever envenoms into a contagion, and nothing 

 but the thinness of the population prevents the fever becoming a 

 Plague. A commission of medical men has been despatched, or is to be 

 immediately despatched to Riga, to ascertain the nature of the disease ; 

 and we may be satisfied that, if it should unhappily cross the channel, it 

 will be met by every wise and efficient precaution. 



