It must be evident, that legislative precaution can only be made applicable to the first of these. The last being unchangeable by human authority, are not to be assailed by any decrees we can fulminate against them; and if it can be shown, which it has been by our best and latest reports, that Cholera Morbus eminently and indisputably belongs to that class--that the strictest cordons of armed men could not avail to save the towns of the continent, nor the strictest quarantine our own shores, from its invasion--it surely must be time to cease those vain attempts, to lay down the arms that have proved so useless, and turn our undivided attention, now that it has fairly got amongst us, to conservative police, and the treatment of the disease; but as the contagionists still insist that it was imported from Hamburgh to Sunderland, it behoves us to clear away this preliminary difficulty before proceeding to other points of the enquiry. I take it for granted, that ships proceeding from Sunderland to Hamburgh could only be colliers, and that according to the custom of such vessels, they returned, as they do from the port of London, light; and I admit, that on or about the time of their return, Cholera Morbus, under the severe form which characterises the Asiatic disease, made its appearance in that port, presenting a fair _prima facie_ case of imported contagion; but as at the period of its thus breaking out in Sunderland, a case equally as fatal and severe shewed itself, according to the public accounts, in the upper part of Newcastle, 10 miles off; another equally well-marked, in a healthy quarter in Edinburgh; a third, not long before in Rugby, in the very centre of the kingdom; and a fourth in Sunderland itself, as far back as the month of August, as well as many others in different parts of the country;[23] it became incumbent on the quarantine authorities, indeed upon all men interested in the question, whether contagionists or otherwise, to shew the true state of these vessels, as well as of the cases above alluded to, and whether the Cholera Morbus had ever been on board of them, either at Hamburgh or during the homeward voyage, so as by any possibility they could have introduced the disease into an English port. Now will any person pretend to say that this has been done, or that it could not have been done, or deny that it was a measure, which, if properly executed, would have thrown light upon the true character of the disease, not only for the information of our own government but of every government in Europe; that deputations from the Board of Health, backed and supported by all the power and machinery of government, with the suspected ships locked up in quarantine, and the persons of the crews actually in their power, could not have verified to the very letter, the history of every hour and day of their health, from the moment of their arrival at Hamburgh till their return into port? This measure was so obviously and