Page:The Pamphleteer (Volume 8).djvu/112



HE physician investigates the nature of his patient's case before he prescribes for it: if he misunderstands the disorder, he is not very likely to be successful in its cure. But I am not about to assume the character and perform the functions of the physician. I have no remedy to propose for this formidable disease, believing it to be utterly irremediable, and that Doctor Solomon himself, in all his glory, cannot offer a specific. What cannot be remedied, however, may possibly be prevented. If the nature of the mildew, its origin, and its cause be rightly understood, means may be suggested by some ingenious observer, not to mitigate its effects perhaps, but possibly to resist its encroachment. In the present year [1811,] this Dæmon has taken a wide and destructive flight, shedding poison from its wings, and blasting with its breath the promise of the spring. I would not give a groundless alarm wantonly; but it is better that the public should suffer from an imaginary evil than a real one, from the apprehension of a deficiency in the wheat crop, than the existence of it. If the mildew has not extended its ravages so widely as I fear it has, all the better: the alarm is groundless, perhaps useless, but at any rate not mischievous, for it can do no harm to take timely precautions against