3. It is objected that the disease was not brought from the Levant by infected goods. “Captain Chataud’s vessel, supposed to have brought the infected goods, arrived with a clean patent, or bill of health, having left the coast of Syria before the plague broke out there; she consequently cannot reasonably be thought to have transported the plague, which was not in the ports from whence she came.” To this Dr. Russel answers, that on commercial accounts the Turks carefully conceal the appearance of the plague from the Europeans. Should reports of accidents get abroad, they are variously and contradictorily represented, and pestilential marks and tumours fraudulently concealed. Though Chataud obtained a clean patent, the plague broke out soon after his departure, and three vessels with foul patents arrived at Marseilles a few days after Chataud. “To this (says Dr. Russel) it may be further added, that, notwithstanding his clean patent, persons acquainted with the Levant will think it far from improbable, that the plague might actually have been in Sidon when he sailed, though unknown to the magistrate, by whom the patents are granted.... A clean bill of health imports that the place has been free from plague, and all suspicion of plague, for a certain space of time; but the clean patents of the two first arriving from the Levant, after the cessation of the plague, are, according to Mr. Howard, deemed foul at Marseilles, and the passengers are obliged to perform a quarantine of thirty-one days. The French consuls lying under an obligation to insert in their patents a detail of circumstances, it must appear strange, when the condition of Syria at that time is considered, how Captain Chataud should have obtained a clean patent.” Though this must certainly be deemed a sufficient answer to the objection, Dr. Russel goes on to give an account of what had happened the preceding year, when the plague had raged violently at Aleppo; and shows that, from the condition of the whole coast of Syria, a return of the plague was certainly to be expected; that the French consuls could not be ignorant of this, neither could the council of health at Marseilles be unacquainted with what had happened at Aleppo the preceding year. “The facility with which the patents seem to have been issued in Turky, and the partial indulgence of the council to Chataud’s ship, notwithstanding the very extraordinary mortality which had avowedly happened on the voyage, together with their easy confidence afterwards in the reports of the surgeon of the lazaretto, can only be accounted for from the prevailing influence of private commercial interest over a sense of official duty.”