294 History of Animal Plagues. 



has been so, I need only appeal to those who have observed its 

 mortality in verv different countries and very different seasons. 

 The truth of this fact would have been still more apparent but 

 for the early care of the legislature^ which by enabling distant 

 countries to guard against the approach of suspected cattle, did 

 thereby for a long time prevent the infection from being carried 

 into many different grounds of very different degrees of fer- 

 tility. But, notwithstanding all their prudence, it has now 

 insinuated itself into very distant countries and very different 

 soils, where its pestilential contagion is even still sufficiently 



evident A late ingenious writer (vide Essay on 



Pestilential Contagion) has proposed the only effectual method, 

 if indeed anything can be effectual in the present diffusive- 

 ness of the contagion, which I think there is too much reason 

 to doubt. For if we consider how long it has now raged 

 among us, and how ineffectual every method enjoined by the 

 legislature to restrain the communication between the infected 

 and the sound has for a long time been, we cannot but think it 

 probable that some portions of infection are now dispersed in an 

 infinite number of places in this kingdom, and as long as any of 

 these infectious portions remain undestroyed (which in some that 

 are lodged in substances very retentive of infection, such as hair, 

 wool, &c., must certainly be a long time), so long it will be in the 

 power of every animal in whose clothes or hair they at present 

 lie concealed to propagate them whenever they come near that 

 species of animals which alone they are adapted to infect. And 

 when the occasions of spreading disease are become thus exten- 

 sive, what can a Government do ? Be it ever so disposed to 

 restrain any suspicious commerce between its subjects, it cannot 

 prevent danger where it sees it not ; and be it ever so circum- 

 spect and vigilant, it cannot possibly see where it is, unless it 

 offers some marks of itself to men's senses; which it certainly 

 does not but where it meets with its object, the cattle themselves. 

 Wherever, indeed, it actually breaks out, from thence all further 

 occasion of spreading it may be prevented by the learned author's 

 method; but still it may be propagated from every other place 

 and thing where it continues unexhausted; and therefore it must 

 necessarily be a long time before it be extinguished. (Perhaps it 



