Gazette Of The United States, & Philadelphia Daily Advertiser

Igkfs whar tht the faithful execution of the quarantine and of course the destruction of their favorite doctrine of domestic origination; and of this reason they have had the impudence to condemn the law as an unwarrantable restriction on the freedom of commerce. Fie, for shame, gentlemen, your plot is discovered—Have yourselves.

PHILADELPHUS.

MR. FENNO,

WHEN I addressed a few lines, through the medium of your paper, to the Board of Health, I did not imagine that I should give any body the smallest offence; and least of all that what I had written would subject me to the suspicion of being an outrageous democrat; as this is as different from my real character as light from darkness. And the proposition itself, if it has any thing to do with politics, has rather an aristocratic phiz.

As the Board consists of some of the most respectable characters in the city, who are justly considered by their fellow-citizens as the principal guardians of the public health, I always thought it proper that they should have an absolute controul over the Port physicians, on whose faithful co-operation so much depends. These physicians are paid for their services, and it is necessary they should be responsible to some authority, more efficient than the Governor, who has always fled from danger on its first appearance, and is often so indisposed at his country seat, as not to be spoken with. To whom then could this authority be so properly transferred as to the Board of Health, who are always at the post of danger; many of whose members had distinguished themselves by their humanity, firmness and activity in the melancholy fall of 1798; and who ought no other recompence for their past exertions than the approbation of their own minds. It is not common, neither is it natural, for men who take so dangerous and troublesome an office on themselves, without fee or reward, wantonly to abuse their authority. Nor can I see the reason why any person, who has nothing in view but the common safety, should be so much alarmed at the amendment proposed, unless he wished to render the Port physicians altogether unaccountable. The responsibility to the Governor I consider as a mere shadow; for it is well known that many men have been appointed to offices by his Excellency, and have enjoyed them for many years, contrary to the general opinion, as well as the peace and honor of the State. The instances of the abuse of power, exemplified in the former single legislature of Pennsylvania, and in the late execrable French convention, are as strong as any the Philadelphian could have adduced against democratic assemblies, but I cannot agree that they have much relation to the present case. However, when I wrote before, I had not once considered the subject in a political view, or even consulted the Constitutional code in making up my opinion. It was the awful state of the city, threatened by the ravages of a desolating pestilence, that occupied my attention; and with this impression, I considered as lawful and proper, any measure that tended to our preservation.

But considered in a constitutional light, I see nothing wrong or novel in the proposition. There are many other offices that are not in the Governor's appointment, over which, therefore, he has no controul; and I know of none that could so properly be taken from him, as the appointment of Port Physicians; or any other hands in which it could so safely and consistently be reposed, as in the Board of Health, who are appointed to superintend the execution of every part of the law. In case of misconduct, and who is impeccable, it would hardly be proper that the Board should desert their post in the hour of danger, and spend their time in waiting on the Governor with their complaints, to go through the irksome process of finding and proving, when the enemy had entered the premises, and was spreading havock and dismay from house to house. No! the evil would require the promptest remedy; and I repeat it again, no man or body of men can be so capable of judging with truth and certainty as the Board of Health.

Before I conclude I will just add, that it is far from me to wish to excite jealousies, or to throw the apple of discord between the Board of Health and the Port Physicians: on the contrary I shall rejoice sincerely if they unite together in perfect harmony, to guard us against the approaches of, the enemy in every quarter: and this I have no doubt they will accomplish, if they attend with due vigilance to the avenue where the enemy hitherto has always entered.

I had written so far when a second reply, by another hand, appeared in your Gazette, and inclined me to delay the publication, from an expectation of seeing something more on the subject, that one answer might serve the whole. I have not been disappointed: the Philadelphian, as he styles himself, has taken up the pen a second time, to refute me, and to defend the pernicious doctrine of domestic origination. I suspect the author is one of those creatures, called Young Doctors, and that he has been taught by his master, as a leading precept, to make proselytes, and to adhere to his errors with all the pertinacity, and unblushing impudence of a French Philosopher.

There is so great a similarity in the conduct of these medical innovators, and the French Revolutionists, that I suspect that they are cousins of the same wicked stock, and that it will not be amiss briefly to trace the analogy. The one, while he is carrying blasphemy, oppression, plunder and devastation through the earth, has the audacity to declare that he is contending for the freedom and happiness of mankind:.

"As if the villain were no ties can bind
In private life, can cherish all his kind."

The other, while he is contending with the obstinacy of a fiend for an opinion, which, if generally adopted, will render Philadelphia "a city forsaken" has the effrontery to profess himself her friend. They both engage likewise with weapons forged in the same manufactory; abstract speculations; fanciful theories: that will not bear the test of fact and experience.

If these gentry, in the numerous publications they have vomited from the press, had brought a single fact to prove the existence of the yellow fever in Philadelphia from 1792 to 1793, or accounted for its suspension during the healthful interval; if they had explained the reason, why it first appeared in the vicinity of the shipping, an airy situation, instead of the dirty, confined alleys, and the filthy suburbs of the city; why also it had made such ravages in Wilmington, Marcus-Hook, and Chester, open, airy villages; or if they had proved that the atmosphere of Philadelphia, notwithstanding the great improvement of the city and the circumjacent country, in every respect that regards salubrity, was growing more unhealthy, they might boast of something like an argument. But they have done nothing of this kind: it would be reasoning too much like common men. All they have written, and we all know they have written enough, has been about some newly discovered agents in the air, Gas, and Phlogiston, which may exist, or may not exist, for aught I know, but which I am sure were as harmless as the Genii of Fairy-land, until the wise Doctors thought proper to give them "a local habitation, and a name," and to assign them certain works of death to perform.

If the opinion of these speculators in science, these Doctors of occult qualities, has any truth in it, the quarantine law, which employed the Legislature so many weeks to mature, is not only useless but pernicious, and ought to be repealed. It is a folly to stop the vessels from coming up one day, if the yellow fever is an indigenous disorder: for if it should not be imported by the shipping, such is the poisonous state of Philadelphia, and such the sickly temperature of its air, it will be generated in our chambers and families. This is so absurd and so gloomy an opinion, so replete with ruin to our lives and estates, that I am really amazed any man, who inculcates it, will dare to call himself a Philadelphian.