What a field for reflection there is in these cases, which originating with the imperfect state of the laws and institutions, have fostered and encouraged the disease! But this is a subject which it would not behove us to discuss, and we prefer to show by the notes which will be found appended to the end of this work, and which are produced as attesting documents, that cattle proprietors, by their own confession, too often sacrifice the interests of the public to their own private advantage.[K]
Nor have we been able to participate in the thoughts and reflections of so many sensible and judicious persons, on the impotence and dilatoriness of the public authorities, and also, let us say, on the inadequate pecuniary means proposed by a people so lavish of its wealth when useful and great undertakings are designed, without paying a natural tribute of regret, to the memory of a Prince who took so deep an interest in the progress of agriculture, and who, had he still been living, would have known how to direct with a firm and steady hand, the right measures to be taken amidst so many intricacies and embarrassments.
Sometimes allusion has been made to France in the speeches delivered at these meetings, presided over by that active magistrate, the Lord Mayor. In the course of these remarks the speakers have praised and held up to admiration the advantages of her system of centralization, the decrees of her sanitary police, and the promptness with which she executes the measures which the public interests require. That is true. France is certainly in a state to resist the scourge with very effectual means to arrest its progress; but if in this matter, as in some others, she have acquired a superiority, it has only been by an experience dearly purchased, these epizootics having returned more than once to destroy her flocks and herds. Politically, the same might be said of her revolutions, those great moral epidemics.
An orator, a writer, went so far as to say, in one of his numerous letters, the one dated the 24th of August: "I regret to say some of our neighbours laugh at our expense."[L]
No, your neighbours will not laugh at your misfortunes. They sympathize at present both in your joys and sorrows, and if I have taken up my pen on this occasion, it has only been because I could not look with indifference on your too just anxieties, when I flattered myself that I might write some useful pages to mitigate and relieve them.