Everything teaches us that when one avenue to death is closed another opens—

“Noctes atque dies patet atri janua Ditis.”

Vaccination, great as its merits are [What are they?—J. G.], and no one more fully appreciates them than I do, does not, and cannot do, all that its too sanguine admirers promised. The blessings of Vaccination are met and balanced by the Law of Vicarious Mortality. How and why is this? The explanation is easy. The weak plants of a nursery must be weeded out. If weakly children do not fall victims to Smallpox, they live to fall into the jaws of tyrants scarcely less inexorable. Scarlet Fever and Measles are both advancing in respect of mortality; and the increase of deaths by Hooping Cough since this century set in [that is, since the introduction of Vaccination.—J. G.] is quite extraordinary.[287]

The concession of so much was the concession of all. If smallpox was merely displaced to be replaced, and the tale of death maintained by cognate diseases, what was there to claim for vaccination, even if it were allowed to have an influence adverse to smallpox? Where were the lives saved? and where the glory of the immortal Jenner?

The advocates of compulsory vaccination were accustomed to cite countries like Austria, where the practice was enforced, for English imitation. Let us then compare, said Mr. Gibbs, the death-rate of the chief centres of English population with the death-rate of the chief divisions of Austria, and note which had the advantage in the years 1850-51—

Death-rate
per 1000.		Death-rate
per 1000.
England and Wales 22·0Lower Austria 35·7
London23·3Upper Austria27·7
Liverpool29·0Styria30·3
Manchester29·0Bohemia38·6
Birmingham23·3Moravia30·9
Leeds24·6Galicia30·8
Dublin26·8Lombardy33·9
Cork23·3Venetia33·3

These figures required no commentary. If vaccination had stopped smallpox in Austria, it evidently had not reduced mortality even to the level of the most insanitary English towns.

Assuming, said Mr. Gibbs, that vaccination is entitled to all the credit claimed for it, let us endeavour to estimate the gain, if it should be enforced. The yearly average of deaths from all causes, in England and Wales, is 370,000, of which about 7,000 are from smallpox—

This 7,000, then, is the limit of gain which enforced Vaccination could confer; but from the 7,000 should be deducted about one-third for deaths from Smallpox among the Vaccinated; and from the remainder should be deducted an equivalent for the deaths caused immediately and remotely by Vaccination; and another equivalent for the deaths resulting from the Law of Vicarious Mortality. This done, it would require no little ingenuity to discover a balance in favour of Vaccination.