The Sun.
London, England, 1846-08-07 00:00:00

cance.

" You take my house when you do take the prop
That cloth sustain my house: you take my life
When you do take the means whereby I live."
Conciliation Hall serves the purpose of a political venti-
lator, and acts wholesomely enough for the time. 'With
a stinted franchise, and but a spare number of repre-
sentatives, it is not unnatural that an ardent, discon-
tented, and suffering people, should sympathise with an
Association which offers a safe outlet to their feelings,
and authoritatively sots forth the wrongs by which
they are oppressed. The phantom of repeal
troubles not our brains. O'CONNELL has frequently
alleged that without the co-operation of the Protestants
repeal is hopeless, and for their support he will look
in vain. If Ireland were as righteously governed as
England and Scotland, repeal would never be de-
manded. Scotland might then just as well agitate
for a severance of her union, as Ireland. Neither
would the absurdity stop short of kingdoms, for
an extensive and numerous county, or two or
more of them united, might, as far as abstract ar-
gument is concerned, just as reasonably start for a
several, or conjoint independence, till, in fine, we
relapsed into another Heptarchy. It is not pre-
tended, that, were equal rights conceded to
Ireland, there would still remain in that country
political peculiarities, establishing the necessity
for a separate legislature. The latter pri-
vilege has only been earnestly sought for, from the
partial belief that England never would place Ire-
land upon the same footing with herself in all other
respects. Our past rule may have done mush to
strengthen this belief, but we rejoice to think
we have reached a period when a beneficent
spirit will influence our national councils, and prosper
and direct all their consultations, to the safety,
honour, and welfare of that afflicted country.

The report of the Royal Academy of Medicine of
Paris on the questions referred to them by the French
Government, with a view to their giving an opinion
on the quarantine laws, is a document of the greatest
importance, and from which we may eventually hope
for the most valuable results, in the relaxation,
and, perhaps, ultimate abolition of the odious
system, by which the most injurious effects
have been produced—by which science has been
impeded, travelling obstructed, and commerce,
navigation, and manufactures seriously restricted.
The report of these learned gentlemen, which
is in every way worthy of their high reputa-
tions, objects in the strongest manner to the
system now in use by the authorities of Mar-
seilles, where the quarantine regulations are most
frequently used, and which it justly designates as
having been adopted under the influence of exagge-
rated fear and a total ignorance of the limits
of danger, and as stamped in several
points with a character of barbarism which
demands an early reform. The: Commission pro-
poses a line of conduct entirely opposed to the mea-
sures now taken. It is suggested they should be re-
placed by means simple and easy of execution, and
which have already received the sanction of expe-
rience.

The report is divided into four branches : the first
refers to countries in which the plague has arisen, or
Still arises, spontaneously; the second, to its epide-
mic or sporadic character, and to the manner
in which it propagates itself ; the third treats
of the transmissibility of the disease ; and the
fourth of what is the common or exceptional
time for the incubation of the plague. It then
introduces the applications therefrom to the question
of quarantine. On the first branch, after giving a
definition of what the plague is, and the general
characteristics of the several localities in which it has
arisen spontaneously at different times, they arrive at
the conclusion, that in all countries where the disease
has been observed to be spontaneous, it may reasonably
be considered to arise from certain causes acting on
a great portion of the population. Those causes are,
living on a marshy soil, near the Meliterranean sea—
near certain rivers, the Nile, the Euphrates, or the
Danube—living in houses that are low, not well
ventilated, and where there exists a superabundant
accumulation of inhabitants—hot and damp air—the
action of animal and vegetable substances in a state
of decomposition; and, lastly, great moral and human
misery.

In Lower Egypt, where these causes are chiefly
prevalent, the disease is endemic. It is observed to
assume the sporadic form every year—that is, when it
attacks a small number of separate individuals, and is
wanting in the character belonging to epidemic
diseases ; and the epidemic, where it attacks a vast
number of persons in a given time, about once in
every ten years. After showing that this country,
now so frightfully afflicted, and from which the prin-
cipal danger of the importation of the disease is to be
feared, was for a long space of time kept free
from the epidemic by good administration and the
exertions of the sanatory police of the country,
they state their expectation that the adoption of
the same means would be followed by the
same results. We have thus the hope afforded to
us, that by energetic measures being adopted in
Egypt, the scourge may eventually be banished from
the face of the earth. Surely such a desirable result
—a consummation so devoutly to be wished for—'
t r
evincedtieeh s
the
condition
o Mef
would justify the different European Governments
more particularly the French and English, in remon-
strating
i wnit h
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anxietypww ehho poo
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presidesit
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the d
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nation,
intro-
ducedso many and such valuable reforms, and who
has
ameliora-
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ob
e
ofe s h
supposed that if the restrictions and expenses occa-
sioned thereby to the commercial interests of his
country, which he has proved himself so desirous of
advancing, were clearly pointed out, that he would
adopt every suggestion calculated to attain the object;
and from the extraordinary power belonging to an
Eastern Sovereign he would have the means of
doing so more readily available than in a more
limited monarchy would be possible ? Sincerely do