Besides silk and cotton, we take fruit and drugs, some of which are also re-exported; but I am sorry to find, that though our Levant trade is more flourishing than it has been for many years past, yet its rise is considerably checked by our own laws, and by the want of a regular Lazaretto in England. If there is the least suspicion of the plague being at Smyrna, no vessel, even of our own nation, is permitted to discharge her cargo in Britain, previous to her having performed a quarantine in some other part of Europe; for our Lazarettos do not admit vessels from infected ports. But since our manufactories must be supplied with silk and cotton, our merchants are obliged to employ the Dutch, who land their goods in a Lazaretto in Holland, and after a short quarantine performed there, send them over to us. Thus do we suffer foreigners to deprive our seamen of employment, and our country of its just profits. The cause that produces this prejudice to our Levant Company, is our dread of the plague. But are we more likely to be infected by this distemper than the Dutch? Or is England less able than Holland to set apart a small place for a regular Lazaretto? There are innumerable spots in our island which might be inclosed for this purpose, where goods from infected places might be properly aired, and afterwards introduced with more safety by our own subjects, than we at present receive them from the Dutch. A person who has not been in the Levant, cannot conceive the inconvenience and distress arising to our nation, from this want of a Lazaretto. The enterprising spirit of the English leads them every where in search of employment. A vessel arrives at Smyrna--she gets a cargo, and the last day of her loading perhaps the plague appears on shore. What is she to do? She cannot sail for England--she must either submit to a ruinous loss, unload immediately, and fly to another port in quest of a freight, or go to one of the Lazarettos of Italy, France, or Malta, there perform a quarantine, land and reship her cargo; and after having, to the prejudice of the nation, laid out a considerable sum in a foreign port, she arrives at Stangate Creek; where, though the ship perhaps is not long detained, the cargo is put into one of the hulks, and aired with greater care and length of time, than the cotton has been which we receive without any apprehension from Holland.[3] Footnote 3: The Author since his return to England, has been at Stangate Creek, where he found that cotton, and other enumerated goods brought over from Holland, now undergo a similar process to those, which, after having performed a quarantine in a foreign Lazaretto, are brought home by the English. But still the inconvenience to our own people is not lessened, nor ever will, till we have a complete Lazaretto of our own. ---