Page:Remarks on the British quarantine laws - Maclean - 1823.pdf/32

442 in any lazarette at this port having occurred, from the earliest period that can be traced, to the present time. . It cannot be ascertained that any case of absolute plague has ever occurred at this port, on board any lazarette. . The officers at this port are not aware that any case of what is usually called plague, has occurred. . No case of absolute plague has occurred at this port. . No instance is on record of absolute plague having occurred at this port, from 1619 to the present time. . The officers at this port have not any knowledge of the plague having had existence in any lazarette, or other vessel there. Hull. The officers at this port cannot find recorded in their books a case of absolute plague, in any lazarette, during the last 200 years.—Yet, with all this evidence staring them in the face; the Committee « see no reason to question the validity of the principles, upon which such regulations (those of quarantine) appear to have been adopted.”

In this matter there can be no delusion: for, instances of plague, if such had occurred, could not fail to have been ostensibly recorded. What possible object, then, can quarantine have in England, with respect to the commerce of the Levant, whether the plague of that country be, or be not, contagious? Positively If it be not contagious, it cannot of course be either exported or imported; and, if it be contagious, its non-importation during an intercourse of three centuries, ships, goods, and persons almost constantly arriving from pestilential places, is a proof that it is incapable of being imported into England. What farther proof can be required that, with respect to the plague of the Levant, quarantine establishments are, even upon the supposition of contagion, superfluous in England? Or, is it proposed that we should wait for three centuries more before we determine the experiment to be conclusive?—It is evident, then, according to the facts proved upon this occasion, that the Committee have not done their duty, in not recommending the abolition of quarantine regulations in England, as far as regards the plague of the Levant. And, if other epidemics had been included in the scope of their inquiry, as ought to have been the case, the absurdity of these institutions, with respect to all of them, would have been rendered equally manifest.

It being clear, that an inquiry into the validity of the doctrine of contagion, in the plague, could not legislatively have any other result than as its refutation, confirmation, or elucidation might affect the regulations of quarantine, the report of the Committee, even if it had been founded on evidence, could not but have been a perfect nullity, in as much as it did not state (for it was thought unnecessary to inquire) whether, or in what degree, these regulations were found