The infection, however, seemed now to be retiring to the place from whence it originally came. In 1666, or soon after, it seems to have totally abandoned the island of Britain; with the attack in 1711 it left the western countries of the continent next to that island; in 1713, 1714 and 1715 we are informed by baron Van Swieten that it ravaged Austria; in 1721, or soon after, it abandoned France; in 1743 it made its last attack on Messina; and in 1784 we find it confined to Dalmatia and the eastern territories, where it has so long reigned without interruption. From the view then which we have taken of the conduct of the human race, and the consequences of that conduct, we may reasonably conclude, that war will produce famine and pestilence, and that after all violent wars a violent pestilence may be expected, especially if the contending parties interfere with those nations where it is most frequent. Another piece of conduct by which mankind expose themselves to pestilential contagions is, the practice of cooping themselves up in great cities. Mr. Gibbon, speaking of earthquakes, says, that men, though always complaining, frequently bring mischief upon themselves. “The institution of great cities (adds he) which enclose a nation within the limits of a wall, almost realises the wish of Caligula, that the Roman people had but one neck. In these disasters (earthquakes) the architect becomes the enemy of mankind. The hut of a savage, or the tent of an Arab, is thrown down without injury to the inhabitant; and the Peruvians had reason to deride the folly of the Spanish conquerors, who with so much cost and care erected their own sepulchres. The rich marbles of a palace are dashed on its owner’s head, a whole people is buried under the ruins of public or private edifices, and the conflagration is kindled and propagated by innumerable fires necessary for the subsistence and manufactures of a great city.” In plagues, great cities are unquestionably as pernicious as in earthquakes; not indeed by reason of the weight and bulk of the materials, but the confinement of the people within the sphere of infection, and their continual exposure to the causes which prepare the body for receiving it. In fact, it has always been found that plagues begin in cities; and were it not for the multitudes that continually fly out of them there can be no doubt that the mortality would be much greater than it is. The intercourse of many nations with one another, the carrying from one end of the earth to the other of goods capable of bringing with them the infection, must also be supposed a very principal cause of pestilence; but this last will be more fully considered in the next section. At present we may conclude, that, the pestilential contagion having originally fallen upon mankind for their sins, it is still kept alive by the same causes; and, as far as we can conjecture, these sins are, the propensity to murder and destroy which breaks forth in war;