The Sun.
London, England, 1865-10-10 00:00:00

SPIRIT OF THE PUBLIC JOURNALS.

TimSs—There is nothing of which in the present
age we are more justly proud than of our extreme
facility of locomotion. Every quarter of the globe
is now within the reach of a Long Vacation ramble.
We are become familiar with scenes which in the
earlier periods of life seemed hopelessly beyond our
reach, and our influence over other countries is ex-
tended and our commerce with them developed just
in proportion as our means of communication have
been made more sure and more rapid. We must
not murmur if, in exchange for so many benefits,
we receive some corresponding disadvantages, nor
be surprised if the same means of annihilating time
and space which enable us to act so beneficially on
other countries enable them also to react a little less
beneficially on us. We have now obtained an in-
terest in their domestic affairs very different both
for good and for evil from any which we ever had
before. The desire of acquiring large crops of cotton
has given us an immediate interest in the improve-
ment of the government of a number of barbarous
and semi-barbarous States. The constant presence
of our citizens in every part of the world has made
us much more alive than we used to be to the defects
of distant police and the venality of remote tribunals.
We become exceedingly anxious that foreigners
should pay not only their public but their private
debts, since we are to a considerable extent their
creditors. The goodness and badness of their hotels,
steam-packets, and railroads have become matters
of serious importance in our eyes ; and an English
tourist feels fully justified in appealing to The Times
if he is overreached by a Swiss landlord or imposed
upon by a hackney coachman at Vienna. A State
Paper, just published in the French journals, has,
however, carried this sort of solidarity much
further than anything that has hitherto appeared.
We are now informed that we have not an indirect
and fanciful, but a direct and purely selfish interest
in the sanitary arrangements of countries the most
remote and people the most alien from ourselves.
The French Ministers for Foreign Affairs and for
Agriculture and Public Works have presented a
Report to the Emperor of the French on the
best means of preventing the cholera. It seems
that some time ago the French Government de-
spatched a sanitary commission to Egypt for the
double purpose of relieving the sufferers and of
studying the causes and character of the malady
with the view to prevent its irruption into France.
To preserve Europe against the periodical attacks of
cholera the French Ministers think that we ought
rather to stifle it in its birth than impede it on its
route. The obstacles we strive to oppose to it do
little good to public health, and immense injury to
commerce ; the real question is whether we cannot,
in concert with the authorities on the spot, prevent
the disease from coming into existence. It appears
that cholera is imported into Egypt by pilgrims re-
turning from their pilgrimage to Mecca by way of
Djeddah; the travellers by the caravans which visit
Mecca are, from the fatigues and privations which
they suffer, peculiarly subject to cholera. The per-
sonal filth, torrid heat, and propitiatory sacrifices,
engendering a large quantity of putrid meat, are
among the causes of this tendency. Two hundred
thousand people collect from different Mahomedan
countries at the beck of this ridisulous superstition,
and the number of sheep and camels slaughtered
exceeds, according to the authority of this official
document, the incredible number of one million. It
is not the first time pilgrimages have been the cause
of the mcst serious evils to Europe ; and the cholera
of the 19th century, occasioned by the pilgrimages
to Mecca, is a very fair counterpart to the miseries
endured by mediaeval Europe in the Crusades, the
result of the pilgrimages to Jerusalem. The evil
must have existed for a long time, but it is im-
mensely aggravated by the cause at which we
glanced above, the great facility of modern commu-
nication. Instead of making their pilgrimage
through the desert, and wearing out the disease in
the open air, the weak dying and the strong recover-
ing according to the natural course of things, the
whole mass of festering pilgrimage is transported
across the Red Sea in an incredibly short time by
the inappropriate and inopportune agency of steam.
We were always shocked at the hypocrisy of thepil-
grim who boiled his peas, and we equally disapprove
the manner in which these hardships of desert
travel which no doubt form a considerable portion of
the merit of every green-turbaned Hadji, are eluded
by the modern and unromantic contrivance of the
steampacket. One could just as well imagine Chau-
cer's Pilgrims, armed with a first-class ticket apiece
for Canterbury by the London, Chatham, and Dover
Railway. By this short passage a festering mass of
disease is annually cast upon the shores of Egypt.
The French Ministers think that if proper care had
been taken in regulating the passages of these pil-
grims, and attention had been given by the local
sanitary authorities, it might have been possible to
extinguish or insulate the centres of an infection
which has spread from Egypt to Syria, to Asia
Minor, and finally to the South of Europe. They,
therefore, propose the meeting of a Conference to
inquire whether it may not be necessary to establish
an international sanitary administration at Djeddah
and Suez, with every possible guarantee of loyal im-
partiality, co-operated with by the Eastern Govern-
ments, the States of which, as the paper very truly
remarks, are the first to suffer by the effect of these
pilgrimages, the devastating eff cots of which Mahomet
himself can hardly have foreseen. We shall not be
surprised if diplomacy views this Paper, taken in
connection with the canalisation of the Isthmus of
Suez' as a new effort on the part of France to esta-
blish a firmer hold on Egypt to gain a footing in
Arabia, and thus to dominate the overland route of
England to her Indian possessions. The alarmists
who have been so long frightening us with the ope-
rations of Russia in Central Asia will no doubt be
ready to see a new danger in this proposal, and to
put us on our guard against the insidious and over-
reaching policy of our great neighbour. For our
own part we confess we do not share these fears.
The principles laid down by- the French Govern-
ment seem to us perfectly sound, and the facts
to which they are to be applied clear and incon-
trovertible.doubtedthat We cannot see how it can possibly be
all those countries of Europe which
are exposed to the periodical visitations of the
cholera have the most direct and lively interest in
whatever tends to generate or disseminate the
disease. We might regard the sacrifices of Mecca
with as much indifference as the customs of Dahomey
if we were not in daily and hourly expeCtation of
finding ourselves included in the victims whom they
offer up. They are welcome to destroy, if they
please, their million of camels and sheep ; but we
have the most obvious right and the clearest in-
terest in preventing them from offering their heca-
tombs of the population of London Or Manchester.
The Paper is not very explicit as to the means
which we are to employ, and it may turn out
after all that what we can do will amount to
very little. Nothing is more difficult than to alter
the manners and customs of the East, and though
the French may produce some influence on the
Government, it will be very difficult to secure any
useful co-operation on the part of the people.
Still the thing is worth an effort, the stake we
play for is a large one, and it is better to fail
in such a cause than never to have attempted to
succeed. History records many invasions of Asia
by Europe ; but the tables are now turned, and
Europe is now called upon to devise means for
resisting periodical invasions by Asia more de-
structive of human life than the expeditions of
Timour or cif Genghis Khan. We have ceased
to fear Asiatic valour, but it is necessary that we
should guard ourselves against Asiatic filth ga-
thered into one festering and corrupted heap by
the evil genius of Mahomedan fanaticism. The
cholera may not be contagious, but it certainly
did not take its rise in Europe ; and if we are
subjected to its invasions, it is because Asia has
produced it and sent it forth in mysterious cur-
rents to depopulate the Western world. All hon-
our, then, to the Emperor of the French, who
comes forward to save modern society from this
grievous scourge. Every man of humanity must
wish for his success, and trust that he may not be
defeated by political jealousies and prejudices,
which should not be allowed for a moment to in-
terfere with this work of common sense and mercy.
POST.—The fact that the cholera unquestionably
takes its origin in the Asiatic Continent, and that it
has on the occasion of its several visits to Europe
pursued a westerly course, until the broad Atlantic
presented an insurmountable barrier to its further
progress, have not unnaturally set people thinking
about a means by Which the advance of the dread
enemy might be arrested ere he crossed the thres-
hold which separates the countries which he only
occasionally visits from those in which his residence
is perpetual. Europe is not divided from Southern
Asia by any broad sea, but there are some who are
sanguine enough to believe that a well-regulated
quarantine might create as efficient impediments to
the onward march of the epidemic disorder as those '
which are supplied at some places by the natural
configuration of the globe. Of the real nature of the
disease we are, unfortunately, notwithstanding our
terrible experience of its ravages, almost as igno-
rant as when it first appeared amongst us 33 years
ago; and as the medical profession have not yet de-
cided whether it is contagious or not, it is of neces-
sity difficult, if not impossible, to resolve upon the
measures best calculated to confine it to particular
localities. If an epidemic follows a certain track in
obedience to atmospheric influences, it is clearly as
idle to attempt to check its progress by interrupt-
ing the communication between particular districts
or countries as it would be to endeavour to stop
the course of a balloon by shutting a turnpike gate.
But it is not clearly established that the spread of
cholera across a continent is owing to atmospheric
influences; nay, some pretend that its development

depends upon the actual contact between the mem-
bers of a healthy community and those of one in
which the disease has already made its appearance.
Assuming the latter hypothesis to be correct, the
establishment of a quarantine wherever possible
would of course be the most likely means of check-
ing the further development of the epidemic ; and
as the hypothesis may be a true one, there are
many who, faute de mieux, urge its adoption.
Hithert, however, States have contented them-
selves with endeavouring to defend their own fron-
tiers after their own fashion, leaving their neigh-
bours to do just as they pleased. Now, how-
ever, for the first time, a proposal is made that all
the Powers of Europe should unite as against a
common enemy, and should endeavour, if possible,
to defend the pass by which it supposed the dreaded
epidemic invariably enters the Western Continent.
A report has just been addressed to the French
Emperor, signed by two of his Ministers, in which
a proposal, unquestionably novel, and, probably in
the opinion of many, startling, is offered not only
for the acceptance of his Imperial Majesty, but also
of the Governments of several foreign states. Some
years since, when the cholera first visited Europe,
the French Government despatched a commission,
consisting of eminent medical men, to Egypt, to
study the causes and character of the malady, and
to offer such suggestions as might occur to them
for preventing the further spread of the disease. The
information obtained by consular agents, and ratified
by the unanimous reports of physicians, all pointed,
we are now told, to the conclusion that the epidemic
was imported into Egypt by the Mahometan pilgrims
returning from their visits to Mecca and Djeddah.
Every year the cholera is said to exist among the
caravans of pilgrims arriving in the Holy Cities, the
predisposition to disease on their part being favoured
by their mode of life, encamping in vast multitudes
in the open air, and breathing the pestilential mias-
mata arising from the exposure to a torrid heat of
the putrefying remains of the animals which they
sacrifice. This year the number of pilgrims at
Mecca was unusually great, and the quantity of
animals sacrificed proportionably large, and hence
it is inferred that the virulence with which the fana-
tics were attacked by disease were heightened in a
corresponding degree. Thinned in numbers by a
terrible pestilence, the pilgrims returned to their
homes, carrying with them, as is urged, to the
shores of the Levant the seeds of that disease
which has now spread across Europe. Under these
circumstances, then, it is submitted that it is the
duty of the European Powers to take precautions
against this importation of a deadly malady on
future occasions ; and with this view it is suggested
that a diplomatic conference should take place, in
which such of the European Powers as thought
proper should be represented, to devise such prac-
tical remedies as might seem best suited to prevent
a recurrence of the evil. One such remedy is
hinted at by those who have drawn up the report,
and it consists in the establishment at Djeddah and
Suez of sanitary administrations, possessing an in-
ternal character, and whose duty it should be to
impose such quarantine regulations as would have
the effect of preventing the cholera being transported,
as on previous occasions, to Europe. To the estab-
lishment of sanitary administrations in Egypt there
could be no possible objection, but we are at a loss
to understand why they should be of an interna-
tional character, or why a diplomatic conference of
the representatives of the European Powers should
be a condition precedent to the adoption of measures
which the Egyptian Government would without
assistance be able to carry into effect. But except
in the interests of the pilgrims themselves we con-
fess ourselves sceptical of the advantages which
would spring from the establishment of these ad-
ministrations. If on the occasion of each annual
pilgrimage the worshippers at Mecca suffer from the
cholera, surely it would have been at least as likely
that they would have brought home the infection in
any one of the preceding ten years as in the present
one. We are told, however, that they have suf-
fered more severely on the occasion of the last
pilgrimage than on previous ones ; but if so, is not
the fact probably referable to the same causes
which have called the epidemic into existence in
countries where, except as a rare visitor, it is
happily unknown ? Without attempting to deter-
mine the vexed question whether the development
of cholera depends on atmospheric influences or on
contagion, the unexpected appearance of disease in
so many forms during the present year must satisfy
every one that we cannot, with any appearance of
justice, attribute the appearance of cholera in
Europe to the contempt for sanitary regulations
habitually shown by the pilgrims at Mecca. If,
however, the blame does not lie at their door, to
what purpose should we establish an international
tribunal of health in Egypt?