M. PASTEUR PLAYING WITH EDGED TOOLS. [To THY EDITOR OF
THE EPEOTATOVI SLR,—In your leader of December 3rd under the above heading, with regard to the acclimitisation in the Antipodes of a plague, limited perhaps in intention to the unfortunate rabbits, but possibly entailing unforeseen consequences, you proceed to say that if M. Pasteur's counsel be meekly accepted, "it will not be the last that we shall hear of the deliberate attempt to spread new diseases. That remedy,' as M. Pasteur mildly calls it, will one day be applied to the human world, when it will produce effects of gigantic magnitude, both in the horror it will cause and in the bitterness of feeling which will add to that horror a new anguish." May I point out, Sir, in connection with your pro- phecies for the future, that there has been already once in our history an instance of a " deliberate attempt," or " deliberate " intention, on the most favourable view, to inoculate our enemies with a fell disease, that only to read of must bring shame and confusion of face to Englishmen ; and if I recall the episode now, it is but to point the moral of year article.
During our struggle in America in 1763 with the Indian Border tribes who were laying waste our settlements with fire and sword, Sir Jeffrey Amherst, the Commander-in.Chief, hard pushed by an enemy whose strength he had not at first realised, writes in a postscript to Colonel Bouquet, who was commanding on the frontier, as follows :—
" Could it not be contrived to send the small-pox among these dis- affected tribes of Indians ? We mast on this occasion use every
stratagem in our power to reduce them.—(Signed), I. A."
To this Bouquet replied, also in a postscript, on July 13th, 1763 :—
" I will try to inoculate the — with some blankets that may fall in their hands, and take care not to get the disease myself. As it is a pity to expose good men against them, I wish we could make use of the Spanish method, to hunt them with English doge, supported by rangers and some light horse, who would, I think, effectually extirpate or remove that vermin."
In answer to this, Amherst wrote :-
" You will do well to try and inoculate the Indians by means of blankets, as well as to try every other method that can serve to extirpate this execrable race. I should be very glad if your scheme for bunting them down by dogs could take effect ; but England is at too great a distance to think of that at present.—(Signed), I. A."
The originals of this correspondence are in the British Museum among the Bouquet Papers, No. 21,634 ; but copies of the letters, with remarks and a note thereupon, may be found at pp. 39 and 40, Vol, II. of "The Conspiracy of Pontiac and the Indian War," by Francis Parkman, ed. 1885.
There is no more painful and discreditable episode than the above in all our Colonial history, though matched perhaps by that of the extinction of the aborigines in Tasmania. It is, however, fair to conclude with a passage from Mr. Parkman's book "There is no direct evidence that Bouquet carried into effect the shameful plan of infecting the Indians, though a few months after the small-pox was known to have made havoc among the tribes of the Ohio. Certain it is, that he was perfectly capable of dealing with them by other means, worthy of a man and a soldier, and it is equally certain that in his relations with civilised men, he was in a high degree honourable, humane, and kind."
Oxford and Cambridge Club, December Gth.
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