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The excerpt represents the core issue or deciding factor on which you must meditate, and is drawn from A Journal of the Plague Year by Daniel Defoe: tragical, and which merited to have been considered if there had been
room for it. But it was authorised by a law, it had the public good in
view as the end chiefly aimed at, and all the private injuries that were
done by the putting it in execution must be put to the account of the
public benefit.
It is doubtful to this day whether, in the whole, it contributed
anything to the stop of the infection; and indeed I cannot say it did, for
nothing could run with greater fury and rage than the infection did
when it was in its chief violence, though the houses infected were shut
up as exactly and as effectually as it was possible. Certain it is that if
all the infected persons were effectually shut in, no sound person
 A Journal of the Plague Year |