ht ease themselves of the greatest
part of the dangerous people that belong to them: I mean such as the
begging, starving, laboring poor, and among them chiefly those who, in a
case of siege, are called the useless mouths; who, being then prudently,
and to their own advantage, disposed of, and the wealthy inhabitants
disposing of themselves, and of their servants and children, the city
and its adjacent parts would be so effectually evacuated that there
would not be above a tenth part of its people left together for the
disease to take hold upon. But suppose them to be a fifth part, and that
two hundred and fifty thousand people were left; and if it did seize
upon them, they would, by their living so much at large, be much better
prepared to defend themselves against the infection, and be less liable
to the effects of it, than if the same number of people lived close
together in one smaller city, such as Dublin, or Amsterdam, or the like.

It is true, hundreds, yea thousands, of families fled away at this last
plague; but then of them many fled too late, and not only died in their
flight, but carried the distemper with them into the countries where
they went, and infected those whom they went among for safety; which
confounded[269] the thing, and made that be a propagation of the
distemper which was the best means to prevent it. And this, too, is
evident of it, and brings me back to what I only hinted at before, but
must speak more fully to here, namely, that men went about apparently
well many days after they had the taint of the disease in their vitals,
and after their spirits were so seized as that they could never escape
it; and that, all the while they did so, they were dangerous to others.
I say, this proves that so it was; for such people infected the very
towns they went through, as well as the families they went among; and it
was by that means that almost all the great towns in England had the
distemper among them more or less, and always they would tell you such
a Londoner or such a Londoner brought it down.

It must not be omitted,[270] that when I speak of those people who were
really thus dangerous, I suppose them to be utterly ignorant of their
own condition; for if they really knew their circumstances to be such as
indeed they were, they must have been a kind of willful murderers if
they would have gone abroad among healthy people, and it would have
verified indeed the suggestion which I mentioned above, a