DECREASE OF THE CHOLERA. (From the Times September 27th.)

New Zealand Spectator and Cook's Strait Guardian, Volume VI, Issue 472, 9 February 1850, Page 4

DECREASE OF THE CHOLERA. (From the Times September 27th.)

It would be impossible to exaggerate the sentiment of gratitude which is felt throughout the metropolis at the abatement of the pest from which we are beginning to escape, as it would be to exaggerate the misery which its further continuance would have inflicted. The plague is stayed. Death strikes with a feebh and fitful hand where he so lately smote with so fearful a force. Terror and Despondence, the satellites and companions of Death, are flying before the power which has destroyed the gaunt destroyer. The streets,, which still bear the aspect of mourning and sadness, no longer witness the daily insignia of mortality. One meets,- 1 indeed, jn every place, the memorials of irreparable losses, and the tokens of lasting grief. In tKe throng of the Exchange, in the great thoroughfares, in the crowded streets, we jostile against those who have, within a few days, lost their nearest and their dearest kin. One man, a week ago the happy husband or proud father,

has since followed wife aud children to the grave. The prattle of infancy and the soft accents of affection have been suddenly hushed in a thousand homes. A havoc has been wrought in innumerable families which a long life will fail to repair. But the plague is already stayed ; and, great as the calamity may have been, it is slight compared with what old traditions and modern experience taught us to expect. London has escaped with half the loss sustained in Paris, and a tithe of the destruction which ravaged Moscow, Petersburgh, or Delhi. A termination almost so uuhoped for has filled men's hearts with gratitude. They recognize in the mercy that has arrested the hand of the Destroying Angel the salvation of this country from all those, the moral and material ills, which have ever followed in the train of great pestilences. Had the disease remained among us for any time without abatement, experience tells us it could hardly, have remained without increase. The mortality which had risen from the usual weekly average of 900 to 3000, would not have remained many weeks as low as 3000. Had it gone on in the same ratio of increase, it is hardly too much to say that whole districts in the metropolis and its suburbs would have been laid bare and desolate. True, this would have happened among the abodes of the very poor. But would the consequences of the affliction have been restricted to those spots I Could whole families have been plunged into destitution, and whole parishes have been desolated by panic, in the offskirts of a huge city, without infecting the other healthier elements of society 1 Impossible. Of the plague which has already, we trust, spent its worst malignity, the deaths which it caused were not the sole nor the most terrible result. The great historian of Greece has pictured in 'indelible colours the moral which goes hand in nand with the physical pest. We, as a nation, indeed, may not be in the same state as that refined and volatile people which erected altars to " The Uuknown God." But, can any one who knows anything of our great cities, and especially of our greatest, say that were a pest let loose with uumitigated violence on them or in it, the mere destruction of huraa!i life would measure the havoc and the calamity endured? Would the poorer masses of our population # go untainted by that tame utter recklessneos'of all save present gain and present enjoyment — the same indifference to death or life — honour or dishonour — good or cv il — which poisoned the minds of the Athenians more than the plague destroyed their bodies ? The historian of the great plague of London bears testimony to the frightful immorality, hardness of heart, and savage recklessness, which disputed with piety, contrition, and repentace, the dominion over men's minds. In our age the vast increase of population, the more than proportionate increase of luxury and wealth — the great contrast of conditions and fortunes, have all raised up elements of discord, contention and bitter strife, which were unknown in De Foe's time, but which in a wide-spread pestilence, might now ferment into anarchy and ruin. The metropolis could not have suffered alone. It would have infected all England. We have escaped these evils. We have escaped panic. We have escaped anarchy. We have escaped national convulsion. There have, doubtess, been great suffering, privation and destitution and despair inflicted on us. There have likewise been much hardness, selfishness, and cruelty elicited by it. But, still, how little have these been, compared with the probable and almost inevitable consequences of a heavier and wider mortality ! From this exemption from all the worst evils of a national pestilence, the nation is generally and profoundly thankful. And, if this be, as we believe it to be, the case, does not an occasion so solemn deserve an expression of sentiments as profound ? Should there not be some public and universal recognition of the Might which has stood betweei the living and tho dead — of the Mercy which has spared us the consummation of a dreadful chastisement ? We know that there are men who refuse to acknowledge the hand of God in any great dispensation of His providence — to whom all the vicissitudes of the material world are but the casual results of fortuitous combinations, or the inevitable operations of undetected laws. Fortunately, the majority of mankind have not concurred in ousting the Deity from all concern in the world which He has made. Most men still feel sensible that there is one Omniscient and Ail-Powerful who directs and determines -the issues of life and death to men and nations. It is useless to talk of secondary causes. Secondary causes are but the instruments which the Deity chooses to employ. Sickness, famine, and death, are warnings by which He ■ reminds mankind of their weakness, their helplessness, and their mortality. Every man feels that in, his own family, person^ and circumstances. The sickness that hurries a far vourite child or an affectionate wife to an early grave is an humbling but effective exam--

pie of Divine power and human, weakness. The palsy that prostrates the strong man in the fu'l flash of health and vigour-r-the distress and poverty which stun the rich man in the height of his prosperity — these are but secondary, often tertiary causes; they may often be traced step by step through devious but connected consequences; but each man, in his own heart, feels them to be the indications of a supreme will and the tokens of supower. And when these befall individuals, the prayer is put up in an earnest confidence that He who has inflicted the wound — though He may not heal it — will yet temper the infliction with a blessing. Doubtless the cholera, like any other phenomenon, either of the corporeal or the mundane system, follows certain definite and ascertainable laws. So does typhus fever, so do hurricanes, so do earthquakes. But the laws of which we speak are but a convenient phrase to express the will of the great Lawgiver. He who made can abate, modify, suspend, or warp them. He who can bid a plague rise in the East may direct its sinuous course so as to baffle the observations of the most sagacious, and the deductions of the most intelligent. After all, when we have ascertained the law, we are nearly as helpless as we were before. We may foresee a certain number cases, and mitigate a certain number ; but the highest degree of knowledge which we attain is, that we know but little about them ; ami our utmost skill is baffled by contingencies which defy its explanation. One fact ever appears prominent above the rest — that we are in the hands of a higher Power. And this is a merciful'dispensation. Without such men would stagnate into a moral apathy, and, forgetting the existence of a God, would forget the duties which He has enjoined. It is by these visitations that men are reminded that they are weak. But they are also reminded that they are accountable. There never yet was a great national affliction without some previous neglect of public or private duties. The very plague which has visited us was made more -violent by the omission of kindly acts and the neglect of beneficent laws. The loss of life and the loss of money which we are suffering are penalties by which Almighty Wisdom punishes the delinquencies of Governments and States. Hall we observed the duties of charity and justice more than we have, we should have suffered less than we have. Had we been more devout, we should have been more just and more charitable. Those who have suffered and those who have escaped the pestilence of this year will need no exhortations to acts of individual devotion and thanksgiving. But the suffering assumed the form of a national suffering ; the deliveiance has been a national deliverance. The thanksgiving should be national also. The form and mode of it we do not undertake to prescribe. But we are confident that the people of this land will feel it their duty to utter a solemn and public expression of their thanks to Him who has heard their prayer in due season ; and that, moreover, they will not forget that the mere expression of thanks, solemnized by whatever ceremonial it iray be, will, in a season like this, be but a poor and unworthy homage at the throne of Infinite Justice. There is a sacrifice which should be performed. The graves of our cities have been crowded with the victims of greedy speculation, careless legislation, and frigid selfishness. Those who have perished have for the most part perished in fetid alleys, noi* some and pestiferous houses, vile and infectious cellars, the structures, or properties which were owned by selfish covetousness, and erected by selfish indifference. Let us take warning from our past stupidity or neglect, and not mock a religious solemnity by persisting in cruelty and apathy. While we allow the houses of the poor to be without air, light, or water, while we taiut the breath of the living with the exhalations of the dead, and wliile we squabble in the midst of a destroying pest about the rights of vestries and commissions, our fast will be but an impious hypocrisy, and our prayers a hideous mummery. "Is it such a fast that I have chosen V A day for a man to afflict his soul? To bow down his head as a bulrush, and to spread sackcloth and ashes under him.?' Wilt thou call this a fast, and an acceptable day to the Lord ? Is not this the fast that I have chosen ? — To loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the op- > pressed go free,; and that ye break every yoke ?" _.- j