The Philosopher's Mite to the Great Exhibition of 1851.

Date:
[1851?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The Philosopher's Mite to the Great Exhibition of 1851. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    10/36 (page 10)
    the learned had led them to infer that the calamities of the past were the best guarantee against the danger of the future. The same law influenced the intro¬ duction of the plague in 166<5 ; for both restorations brought with them a motley influx of foreigners. Whether moved by the consideration of the jealousy which might accrue from the presence of an army of foreigners, or struck by the repeated examples of pest occurring in his own time, arising out of a contingent plus population, that wise and sagacious monarch, Henry IV., dismissed with largess all his alien sup¬ porters, and thanking them warmly for the services thev had rendered him, remitted them to their vessels at Plymouth, to sail from thence to Brittany,—not allowing them to await either the issue of his contest with Bichard, or for his own coronation contingent upon the deposal of that monarch. All well-informed men are aware that those heavy visitations of ancient times were traceable, like cholera, as coming from Asia ; but it is equally notorious, that when international intercourse was limited, through¬ out four outbreaks Germany and the Netherlands were exempt, while at the fifth, in these last coun¬ tries, pest developed itself at the great conference at Marpurgh, between Luther and Zuinglius, on transub- stantiation,—»a curious omen for the present religious tendencies of England. Your chronicles will show you, that even meetings of rudimental parliaments, and common assizes, have frequently been the means of exciting sudden out¬ breaks, uniformly ascribed to excessive animalisation