History of Animal Plagues. 353 



maxim more true than that a law of this kind should be void of every- 

 thing strongly repugnant to its own operations, or it will prove a dead 

 letter. 



*To evince more forcibly the extreme great consequence of guarding 

 against the introduction of the murrain into our country, I will here 

 subjoin an account of its late etfects in the United Provinces, whence the 

 deplorable havoc it makes there will appear in the most striking man- 

 ner. The source of the information respecting the facts I shall advance 

 is the registered lists' of the cattle in the south and north divisions of 



"O 



of the murrain, the interest of particulars must give way to the good of the pubhc, 

 that it is best to err on the safe side by taking a full scope of time, which has been 

 deemed forty days, to render the matter entirely clear, and that if the cleansing be 

 a further security it should be added to the restriction of sale for that term. This 

 way of reasoning must be allowed to be right as to the general principles, and ought 

 to be adopted where the facts give just occasion for it, but it fails in that point to 

 be applicable to the present case. The extending the length of time of the restric- 

 tion so much as forty days, does not render the effect of the prohibition more cer- 

 tain, but evidently the contrary. It is shown above, that if the cleansing be put in 

 practice along with it, twelve days will be as effectual as forty, and there is a 

 great probability, when the time is not required to be longer, it may be complied 

 with, there being few cases where it would there be considerably detrimental to 

 the owners of the cattle. Whereas there is the strongest reason to apprehend the 

 longer term would not be generally complied with, and therefore the ordaining 

 it must counteract its own purpose, as the security proposed from it wholly 

 depends on a general conformity to it. When obedience to any matter or- 

 dained is enforced by a penalty, such penalty will ever fail of its full effect 

 when the gain accruing from disobedience is more than equivalent to the 

 risk of the forfeiture, as we daily see in the 'great multiplicity of contraband 

 trade. But this principle must hold good still more strongly here, where num- 

 bers of persons are unavoidably subject to loss without disobedience, than where, 

 as in the case of smuggling, the occasion of it arises only from a voluntary pursuit 

 of profit. The obliging people to keep their cattle so long as forty days, when the 

 injunction suddenly and unexpectedly takes place in cases when they are not pro- 

 vided with fodder to maintain them, nor possibly may be able to procure it without 

 the most distressful difficulties, or where they may lie under a necessity of selling 

 the beasts to raise money they instantly want, will of course create temptations to 

 risk the penalty that can scarcely be withstood by the weaker part of those who 

 may lie under these circumstances ; whence it is both against reason and observa- 

 tion to form expectations of a' general conformity to such an injunction. But if the 

 chance of the loss and inconvenience that may casually attend the keeping the 

 cattle be almost wholly taken away, by reducing the forty to only twelve days, the 

 motives will be proportionably removed for running the hazard of incurring the 

 forfeiture by z. non-compliance with what is required, and there is just ground to 

 hope that the regulation would be then fully effectual. 



* The copies of these lists did not come to my hands till after most of llie fore- 

 going part of this dissertation was printed, otherwise I should have made use of 

 the contents of them in support of several matters I have advanced there, which the 

 inferences to be drawn from them greatly tend to confirm. 



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