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culated to frame laws and regulations for the guidance of mercantile seamen, which is acknowledged by many of themselves. If our ships are to be effectually manned, which can only be done by employing native and regularly bred seamen, trained from their earliest youth to all the hardships and exertion of the profession, inured to every climate and to the changes of season, possessing, at the same time, peculiar manners and habits and way of thinking-to command such persons properly, (many of whom are of as respectable parents, and possess the advantages of as good an education, as many of the officers in our navy, and consequently ought to have a fair chance of promotion in the service,) it would be requisite that the officers commanding such men should unite to a thorough knowledge of their profession the exemplary conduct that is expected from superiors. It is also indispensable that they should be practical seamen; for a seaman will never look up with respect and confidence to an officer who is not master of his profession.

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It is an error very prevalent in the naval profession to insist that it is not necessary that an officer should be a practical seaman. It is unnecessary to combat so gross a delusion, particularly in a commercial country, where every man who commands a ship of war ought to be able to take charge of and conduct a convoy; a duty which absolutely requires nautical knowledge and ability of the first rate, as well as a thorough acquaintance with what merchant ships are able to perform. To the want of this knowledge and ability may be attributed the loss of many millions during the late war, as well as much serious injury in a political point of view. Should this defect remain uncorrected, and another American war break out, the consequences might be most calamitous.'

From the zeal, Sir, which you have uniformly displayed on every subject connected with the public good, I am entitled to claim the aid of your talents and influence towards the correction of an evil, which is of equal magnitude with negro slavery, and appeals with infinitely more force to British sympathy. Had you and your friends been acquainted with its extent, the extraordinary expressions would not have been used in parliament, "that it would be better the war should last ten years longer than that the abolition of the slave trade should not be sanctioned by treaty." The sentiment did not express much benevolence towards our mercantile seamen, who were exposed, as long as hostilities lasted, to the hardships I have so frequently enumerated.

Though a stranger to you, Sir, I am bold to say that few men are better acquainted with the state of our mercantile seamen ; and

This well deserves the serious attention of government, of the merchant, ship-owner, and naval officer; as also a case lately brought on in the Court of Common Pleas-Faith v. Pearson.

few have had, and now have, more intercourse with that meritorious class. I shall further take the liberty of stating, that if proper regulations were once adopted for doing away with the evils of impressment, I feel no hesitation in saying, that I can do as much towards carrying into effect the ideas I have advanced, as almost any man in this kingdom.

The plan I bave proposed will correspond with that which you formed for the extinction of negro slavery, but with this difference, that you in the first instance pretended only to aim at amelioration, while you are gradually going on to total abolition; whereas, I set out with the intention of doing away with impressment altogether, by working in such manner on the minds of our youth, as should prepare them gradually for voluntary and limited service in the navy. This would lead to the idea, that it is a duty imperative on them to serve their country; and, when it is impressed on them, on first entering into the mercantile service, that they are liable to be called on for a fixed period, to defend the rights, the honor, and the interest of their country, there is no doubt that, in due time, it will have the desired effect.

Here, Sir, is a fine and an ample field for your patriotism; it will also afford scope for the exercise of your humanity and sense of justice. That the plan has not been sooner taken up and carried into effect, may have partly arisen from the extraordinary state of public affairs for the last twenty-five years; and many, who perhaps felt its expediency, might not have had the experience and knowledge requisite to arrange and accomplish it. I have not taken up the subject from private interest, or party motives; but having been a witness for a number of years of the evils I propose to correct, I feel conscious at the same time that I could not more effectually promote the interest of my country, than by advocating the rights and improving the condition of our mercantile seamen.

My political creed, as well as, I hope, that of every seaman, has always been founded on this leading point, my king and my country's cause, let who will guide the helm of affairs; because I conceive it to be the duty of every man to aid the executive government whilst it acts for the public good; for government and command, founded on judgment and justice, and obedience with respect for rights and privileges, tend to the good of all men.

That the present state of peace, at the conclusion of a long war, is the best suited to discuss this subject, is not to be disputed. The discussion at this time can have no bad effect on the service, nor throw obstacles in the way of government; at the same time the subject is now more familiar to the minds of men than it will be to the rising generation, after a few years of peace. The time is therefore unobjectionable; and the execution of the plan canhot

be longer postponed, without adding to the difficulties of accomplishment, and without the most serious detriment to the naval service. The American government is straining every nerve to improve and extend its navy; and as our relations with that power appear to be extremely precarious, it would be downright infatuation to neglect this vital subject longer.

It is a melancholy fact, that the mode of impressment during the war had nearly annihilated British mercantile seamen and officers, so that we had not proper persons to train the rising generation in their duties as seamen. This, it must be confessed, is a serious evil, in a country whose vital interests depend on her marine, and proves the imperious necessity of substituting a better system.

Another session of parliament ought not to pass by without applying a remedy to the evil. It is impossible, in the present state of the political world, to say how long we may enjoy the blessings of peace. Though the rage of the storm is spent, yet the clouds are not wholly dispersed. It is therefore imperative on us to be prepared for every possible contingency; and as the navy is the firmest and most constitutional bulwark of these kingdoms, as well as the great source of our power and security, it is therefore the first and most urgent of all duties to improve its condition, and to insure to it hereafter the ascendancy it has hitherto possessed. I have the honor to be,

Sir,

your obedient Servant,

Lloyd's Coffee House, Jan. 1816.

THOMAS URQUHART.

1 Perhaps no man in the kingdom has ever given this subject a tenth part of the thought I have bestowed upon it, from the circumstance alluded to in my Letter to Lord Melville, which was, that in my father's house the plan for the bill for registering of seamen was principally written by a friend; perhaps one of the best-informed nautical men of the age, and at that time in nautical affairs the right hand of Sir Philip Stephens, then Secretary of the Admiralty. The discussions which this led to were so impressed upon my mind when a boy, that it has been a thought through life.

INTO

THE CAUSES AND MITIGATION

OF

PESTILENTIAL FEVER,

AND INTO

THE OPINION OF THE ANCIENTS

RESPECTING

EPIDEMICAL DISEASES.

Ω ΔΕΣΠΟΤ'. ΑΝΑΞ. ΑΜΕΤΡΗΤ. ΑΗΡ.

ARISTOPH.

BY THOMAS FORSTER, M.B. F.L.S. M.A.S. & M.M.S.

CORRESP. MEM. ACAD. NAT. SCIENCES PHILADELPHIA, HONORARY MEMBER OF THE MEDICO-CHIRURGICAL SOCIETY, &c. &c.

SECOND EDITION.

LONDON:

BRIEF INQUIRY, &c.

It has been a very frequent observation of late years, that medicine has not made a progress by any means commensurate to that of collateral branches of science, and that the opinions entertained by the early Greek and Arabian physicians concerning the causes and treatment of diseases, were, in many respects, more correct than those of the medical writers of more modern times. I have already had occasion to notice the degeneracy of medical practice in the treatment of disorders of the brain, and of those of the digestive organs, in a recent publication, and the more able and extensive works of M. Hallè in France, of Mr. Abernethy in England, and of many of our recent writers on insanity, have strongly corroborated the fact, and have tended to show that in the principal improvements in practice, of late, we have done little more than recur to the ancient methods, and have disemburthened ourselves of the empirical prejudices of the middle ages.

I shall endeavor, in the present sheets, to show that this is particularly the case with respect to those sorts of diseases which are usually called pestilential; and which, from attacking a number of persons at once in a large tract of country, have been called epidemic. Erroneous notions respecting the origin of these diseases having led to a confusion of them with those which are contagious, there has arisen a promiscuous use of the terms contagious, pestilential, infectious, plagues, and epidemics, which seems to have furthered the bad practice in these maladies.

According to my view of the subject, the first great distinction which ought always to be made, is between the epidemical complaints and the contagious: the former are universally excited by peculiar qualities in the atmosphere, on constitutions predisposed thereto the latter ordinarily propagated by infectious contact, and by inoculation. The opinion, that the true epidemics were extended by the proximity of the disordered individual to others, seems of

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