And a-begging we will go.
The verses, extending over a hundred pages, are wretched stuff, vulgar and malevolent, and a few extracts from the Preface will indicate the animus of the entire performance. Ring’s assumption was, first, that Walker was a rogue from whom the public required to be protected; second, that his Institution was superfluous; and third, that if greater facilities for vaccination were wanted in London, it should be left to the Government to provide them—
These hints may serve to warn the public. Dr. Walker is an artful, avaricious, and ambitious man; but let him be cautious how he acts when he tries to exercise his art, to glut his avarice, and to gratify his ambition. Let him recollect what was inscribed on the tombstone of an infamous scoundrel—
“Lie still if you’re wise;
You’ll be damned if you rise.”
We recommend him and his accomplices not to try to obtain money by false pretences. A Vaccine Institution has long been established by the Legislature, where, as well as at other Institutions, matter may be procured free of expense; and no one who has much zeal in the cause of Vaccination will find much difficulty in procuring it. If farther aid is necessary, let it be granted by Parliament, and not to a set of swindlers. It is not meet to take the children’s bread and throw it to the dogs.
Many of the agents of the London Vaccine Institution were chemists and apothecaries, and these, according to Ring, had an interest in the propagation of smallpox—
To exterminate Smallpox by means of chemists and apothecaries, the greatest friends of Smallpox, is to cast out devils by Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. You might as well expect a foxhunter to destroy the breed of foxes, or a ratcatcher to exterminate the race of rats.
The Vaccine Scourge producing little effect, Ring returned to the charge in the following year, 1816, with A Caution against Vaccine Swindlers and Imposters.[186] The Caution is a series of libels, the puerility and extravagance of which were their own nullification. A motto was taken from the New Monthly Magazine for the title-page, as follows—
The Jennerian discovery has shed a brilliant lustre on our era; but unfortunately, the discovery has been in a great degree rendered abortive by bastard institutions, created for the purpose of filling the pockets of a set of adventurers, without education, and destitute of principle. We could name several wretches who have fattened, and are still fattening, on such jobs.