Iris curious to contrast the alacrity with which the Chinese Government gave its sanction to the proposed sanitary regulations for the port of Shang-gai, with its slowness in moving when anything for the benefit of navigation is proposed. The sanitary regulation evidently fell in with its peculiar ideas of hampering intercourse by every means in its power, and as the published regulations are charming by their looseness of diction, they probably, too, were doubly acceptable on that score, Now we have some doubts of the benefit of quarantine, even when most strictly observed. The experience of European ports, we think, bears us out in the assertion that, while irksome in' itself and injurious to trade, it has never really stayed the progress of disease. Quarantine, to be effective at all, must put an end to all me ter course of whatever'nature. If we are prepared to take similar mea sures with regard to the human species to those adopted during the cattle murrain in Bngland, we doubtless could stamp out infectious or contageous diseases. The world has not, however, arrived at the point when it is prepared to slaughter suspected subjects, and meanwhile to shut them out from all intercourse with their kind, Till this is done, intercourse by sea is only one of the means, and by no means the most important, by which infectious or contagious diseases are conveyed from one subject to another. We are by no means to be understood to deprecate inspection of ships arriving. There are diseases when it is advisable to remove the subjects affected at once to a place that is as far as possible from communication with the outer world. But there have been found to be instances in which the segregation of crews arriving was found to be in itself productive of disease. In fact, there seems to be more danger of permanently infecting places devoted to the reception of quarantine patients, than of chance arrivals infecting a community. This may not, however, be the main objection to instituting quarantine regulations on European principles in Shanghai. A quarantine to be effective, should, as we have said, be applied to all. Now there are vastly more arrivals in Shanghai by native junks than by foreign vessels. We do not know from the wording of the published regulations whether these vessels are to be
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.