scarce begun, and not at all come down to that part of the city where
they usually press for seamen; and though a war with the Dutch was
not at all grateful to the people at that time, and the seamen went with
a kind of reluctancy into the service, and many complained of being
dragged into it by force, yet it proved in the event a happy violence to
several of them, who had probably perished in the general calamity,
and who, after the summer service was over, though they had cause to
lament the desolation of their families – who, when they came back,
were many of them in their graves – yet they had room to be thankful
that they were carried out of the reach of it, though so much against
their wills. We indeed had a hot war with the Dutch that year, and
one very great engagement at sea in which the Dutch were worsted,
but we lost a great many men and some ships. But, as I observed, the
plague was not in the fleet, and when they came to lay up the ships in
the river the violent part of it began to abate.
I would be glad if I could close the account of this melancholy year
with some particular examples historically; I mean of the thankfulness
to God, our preserver, for our being delivered from this dreadful
calamity. Certainly the circumstance of the deliverance, as well as the
terrible enemy we were delivered from, called upon the whole nation
for it. The circumstances of the deliverance were indeed very
remarkable, as I have in part mentioned already, and particularly the
dreadful condition which we were all in when we were to the surprise
of the whole town made joyful with the hope of a stop of the infection.
Nothing but the immediate finger of God, nothing but omnipotent
power, could have done it. The contagion despised all medicine;
death raged in every corner; and had it gone on as it did then, a few
weeks more would have cleared the town of all, and everything that
had a soul. Men everywhere began to despair; every heart failed them
for fear; people were made desperate through the anguish of their
souls, and the terrors of death sat in the very faces and countenances
of the people.
In that very moment when we might very well say, ‘Vain was the
help of man’, – I say, in that very moment it pleased God, with a most
agreeable surprise, to cause the fury of it to abate, even of itself; and
the malignity declining, as I have said, though infinite numbers were
sick, yet fewer died, and the very first weeks’ bill decreased 1843; a
vast number indeed!
It is impossible to express the change that appeared in the very
countenances of the people that Thursday morning when the weekly
bill came out. It might have been perceived in their countenances that
a secret surprise and smile of joy sat on everybody’s face. They shook
one another by the hands in the streets, who would hardly go on the
same side of the way with one another before. Where the streets were
not too broad they would open their windows and call from one house
to another, and ask how they did, and if they had heard the good news
that the plague was abated. Some would return, when they said good
news, and ask, ‘What good news?’ and when they answered that the
plague was abated and the bills decreased almost two thousand, they
would cry out, ‘God be praised I’ and would weep aloud for joy, telling
them they had heard nothing of it; and such was the joy of the people
that it was, as it were, life to them from the grave. I could almost set
down as many extravagant things done in the excess of their joy as of
their grief; but that would be to lessen the value of it.
I must confess myself to have been very much dejected just before
this happened; for the prodigious number that were taken sick the
week or two before, besides those that died, was such, and the