VACCINIA AGGRAVATES DISEASE.
The asserted connection of vaccination with other ailments, such as bronchitis, sometimes gives occasion to ignorant ridicule. “Bronchitis,” says Sir Lyon Playfair, “has about the same relation to vaccination as the Goodwin Sands have to Tenterden Steeple.” The answer is that the debility produced by vaccination predisposes to affections of the respiratory organs. The human body does not consist of isolated compartments, but is an organised whole, sympathetic in all its parts and functions. Erysipelas, as we have seen, is the primary symptom of inoculated Vaccinia, and diarrhœa is its commonest sequence; and given erysipelas and diarrhœa, what vigour may remain to assist and throw off other ailments? It is not said that certain maladies are communicated by vaccination, but that vaccination contributes to their fatality. An infant that would have survived bronchitis dies of bronchitis and vaccination; dies of teething and vaccination; dies of convulsions and vaccination; dies of whooping-cough and vaccination; and so on. Again disease kindles disease, and many a child might outgrow congenital scrofula or phthisis if the latent disorder were not roused by vaccination. For these reasons no doubt need be entertained that were vaccination abolished, the event would be immediately signalised by an extraordinary fall in infant mortality.
ORIGIN OF COMPULSORY VACCINATION.
If vaccination were a voluntary superstition, its prevalence would be sufficiently deplorable; but when we think of it as inflicted on the nation, and pressed on those who know it for an injurious imposture, language is apt to arise which it is expedient to repress. It may be asked how it came to pass that legislation was ever compromised with a medical prescription, and the answer is not a reassuring one. The initial error was the endowment in 1808 of the National Vaccine Establishment, and the provision of vaccination fees in 1840 out of the poor rate. For the enforcement of vaccination, there never was any popular demand—never the slightest. The public had, however, learnt from sanitarians that a large part of the sickness from which they suffered did not come of fate, but was preventible; and under this novel persuasion the vast expenditure on sanitary works during the past fifty years has been cheerfully incurred. Availing themselves of this favourable disposition in the public mind toward projects in the name of health, certain medical place-hunters operating as the Epidemiological Society contrived to gain the ear of Government and to pass a compulsory Vaccination Act in 1853. The politicians who lent themselves to this transaction disowned any knowledge of vaccination. They acted, they said, under medical advice, and ran the bill through Parliament with little resistance. The Act did not personally concern M.P.’s. If they happened to believe in vaccination, their children received the rite with all recognised precautions. Its enforced application by contract at 1s. or 1s. 6d. per head was reserved for the unenfranchised and unconsulted multitude; whilst the administration of the Act provided place and pay for its ingenious promoters.
RESISTANCE, INFLEXIBLE RESISTANCE.
When an oppressive law is enacted, by whatever strategy or however corruptly, its repeal is no easy matter. The oppressors have won the nine points of possession. The antagonists of the Vaccination Acts nevertheless possess a certain advantage. Some bad laws can only be denounced as it were from a distance; but vaccination touches every household, and can be fought wherever a child is claimed as a victim for the rite.
We abhor the rite. We detest it as an imposture. We dread it as a danger. We refuse it on any terms. We encourage, we justify, we insist on the duty of rejection. Our contention extends and prospers. In various parts of the country resistance has been rewarded with success. The evil law has been broken down. Freedom has been recovered and freedom is enjoyed. In other parts the struggle for liberty proceeds, and as it proceeds, light is diffused and courage evoked for enlarged resistance. Elsewhere there are vindictive and cruel prosecutions, chiefly of humble folk. “Respected ratepayers,” to whom the law is objectionable and its penalties trivial annoyances, are discreetly passed over. Hard, however, is the lot of poor men, who for love of their children affront the dull animosity and ignorance of English Philistines whether as guardians or as magistrates on the bench of injustice. Shortly co-operation for defence and insurance against fines will enable the feeblest and most fearful to maintain his integrity and encounter his pursuers with undaunted front. Parliament, as our statesmen allow, is deaf to the aggrieved until they make themselves intolerable, and to raise ourselves to that pitch must be our end and aim.
COMPULSORY EDUCATION AND VACCINATION.
Many good people are distressed over the operation of this extraordinary law, and sometimes in their perplexity adventure for excuse, “Surely since we compel parents to educate their children, it cannot be wrong to compel them to have their children vaccinated.”
We answer, education is compulsory so far as it is outside conscience. Compulsion is designed to overcome parental indifference and selfishness: where it confronts serious convictions it is arrested. By general consent the most important part of education is religion; and religion is precisely that part of education which is exempted from compulsion. The law does not even enforce some form of religion, so that parents who regard religion as superfluous may not be aggrieved.