have had with the W. Indies, is dying away from an uncertain reliance on a direct opening with the Main; so long as this is in jeopardy, confidence cannot be wholly restored, and operations to both will be partial until decisive measures are adopted to put us on a substantial and firm footing. Reflect, too, that nothing can so materially contribute to the relief of the landed interest as a diffusion of wealth amongst all other classes; and that, with an increase in the sale of woollens and calicos, a proportionate one will follow in the consumption of all the produce of the soil; nothing can permanently relieve it but this, and a decline of commerce would be attended with evils too dreadful to contemplate.

It cannot be necessary for merchants to importune you, who know their interests, to protect them. Commerce is the guardian angel of all our prosperity, wealth, and happiness, and its voice is loud in demanding freedom, without which it must die.

I have the honor to be, Sir,

Your obedient and very humble Servant,

. To the Rt. Hon, G. Canning, M. P. &c.

JOHN LOWE,

ON THE

BRITISH QUARANTINE LAWS,

AND THE SO-CALLED

SANITARY LAWS OF THE CONTINENTAL NATIONS OF EUROPE,

ESPECIALLY THOSE OF

SPAIN.

BY CHARLES MACLEAN, M. D.

KNIGHT OF THE SPANISH ORDER OF CHARLES III.; MEMBER OF THE
MEDICAL ACADEMIES OF MADRID AND BARCELONA; COMMIS-
SIONED BY THE SPANISH GOVERNMENT TO INVESTIGATE

THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF THE FEVER OF
BARCELONA, IN 1821.

"In the fourth volume, the reader will find a retraction of the author's former opinion of the Yellow-fever spreading by contagion. He begs forgiveness of the friends of science and humanity, if the publication of that opinion has had any influence in increasing the misery and mortality attendant upon that disease. Indeed such is the pain he feels, in recollecting that he ever entertained, or propagated it, that it will long, and perhaps always deprive him of the pleasure he might otherwise have derived from a review of his attempts to fulfil the public duties of his situation."

RUSH'S MED. ENQ. AND OBSERVATIONS, PREF.

ORIGINAL.

LONDON.

REMARKS,

&c. &c.

THE code of Quarantine laws in England, and of Sanitary laws in the nations of the continent of Europe, is, perhaps, without exception, the most gigantic, extraordinary, and mischievous superstructure, that has ever been raised by man, upon a purely imaginary foundation. All these codes being in principle similar, I shall here limit my observations to the English regulations of quarantine, and to the Spanish sanitary laws, as affording examples of the whole.

The regulations of the English code, as it at present exists, will be found comprehended in a collection of articles, published by the King's printers, under the title of "An Act, passed the 12th of March 1805. (45 Geo. III. cap. x.) for making farther provision for the effectual performance of quarantine; and also an order in Council, dated 5th April 1805. with reports from the Board of Health." The Act consists of 44 clauses; the order in Council of 50 articles; and these, together with the two reports of the Board of Health, occupy 143 large 8vo pages. They seem to have been principally founded upon the sanitary regulations of the continental nations of Europe, and upon Russell's "Treatise of the Plague," published in 1791, comprehending, with Appendix, about 750 large 4to pages, which, in the preface, he modestly characterises as only "improvable hints."

The project of a code of sanitary laws, presented last year by their committee of public health, to the Spanish Cortes, (now finally rejected, principally in consequence, as I have reason to know, of my representations to that body,) consists of 400 articles, condensed into 64 close octavo pages, of which an examination will be found in my "Sketch of Proceedings in Spain, in illustration of the invalidity of the doctrine of Pestilential Contagion, and of the pernicious effects of quarantine or sanitary laws, &c."

The professed object of the laws in question, very different, as I shall show, from their real object, is to prevent the exportation, importation, and spreading, of epidemic diseases, by the action of

á supposed specific virus; no means having been adopted to ascertain the existence of the alleged evil, previous to the application of the supposed remedy. Its existence was indeed implicitly taken for granted; and reversing the usual mode of philosophising, which fixes the onus probandi upon the parties affirming any proposition, those who have denied the truth of this doctrine, or who have refused to believe it without evidence, have been required to prove a negative. In matters of science, according to the maxim, that " de quid non apparentibus, et de quid non existenbus eadem est ratio," absence of all proof of existence ought, in fairness, to be deemed sufficient proof of non-existence. But, as if pestilential contagion, instead of a matter of fact, were only a matter of faith, it has been represented as safer to believe than not to believe in its existence, without any reference to its truth or falsehood,

:

This doctrine throughout has been nothing but a series of gratuitous assumptions, each surpassing the other in absurdity. The number of the affected has been assumed as evidence of propagation from person to person; the fact of contact as evidence of contagion; and the cessation, or diminution of sickness, as evidence of the efficacy of sanitary precautions. With power always on their side, the adherents of pestilential contagion have been enabled to maintain their positions, without the trouble of adducing any valid proof, unfairly throwing the onus probandi, as I have said, upon their adversaries. Their endless assumptions it has been equally impossible to prove or to disprove. Disputes on controvertible assertions have necessarily terminated without any satisfactory conclusions and their uniform results have been uncertainty and distraction, to which it did not appear that there would for a long time be an end, unless, in respect to the existence of contagion, we could succeed in proving a negative, by showing the impossibility of the affirmative. This task I have undertaken and accomplished. In my "Suggestions for the prevention and mitigation of Epidemic Diseases," &c. ; in my work, entitled, "Results of an Investigation, respecting Epidemic and Pestilential Diseases, including Researches in the Levant concerning the Plague;" and in my "Sketch of Proceedings in Spain, in illustration of the invalidity of the doctrine of Pestilential Contagion, and of the destructive Effects of Quarantine or Sanitary Laws," &c. I have repeated, with additional force, my demonstrations, first promulgated in 1796 in India, of the impossibility of the existence of pestilential contagion; showing farther, that that doctrine, in an accredited form, was first promulgated, for political purposes, by the authority of the see of Rome, in 1546-7, under the pontificate of Paul III.;