That precautions are necessary nobody will deny; but why should we shackle our own people more than the Dutch? Or why should we be more afraid of allowing goods from an infected place to be landed in one of the many waste spots of Kent, Essex, Devonshire, or Cornwall, than foreigners are of receiving them at the very gates of their capital cities. I shall write you a long letter on this subject, when I have gained more experience in the nature of the plague, which I can already assure you is by no means so dangerous a distemper as Europeans imagine it. The factory have great hopes that the generous Philanthrope, who lately visited Asia, will interest himself in their favour. This amiable patriot knows that the navy is the bulwark of Britain, and that whatever tends to decrease the number of our seamen, tends to diminish the strength of our country; a truth so interesting to an Englishman, that I hope to God the accounts I hear of a most alarming decrease in our Greenlandmen are much exaggerated. A proper Lazaretto in England, by increasing our shipping in the Levant, would afford a sustenance to many of those invaluable subjects, whom a perhaps too rigid public œconomy has bereft of bread. There are many inconveniencies attending a correspondence between this country and Europe. The post sets out and arrives but twice a month. It goes through Constantinople and Vienna, and unless letters to and from England are taken up, and paid for at each of those places, they will never reach their destination. The want of a more regular communication must be sensibly felt in a place of so much trade.