Immediately after Mr. Candlish introduced a Bill to the House of Commons to amend the law, repeating his conviction that the construction put upon the Act of ’67 was never intended by Parliament, and that it was by mere verbal accident that penalties were made continuous. The Bill was introduced too late in the session (6th July, 1870) to be carried, but it led to discussion and a promise from Government that the question would be remitted to a Committee next year, 1871.
FOOTNOTES:
[290] Twenty Years’ Experience of a Public Vaccinator. Read before the Sanitary Committee of St. Pancras, 9th June, 1863. Third edition. London, 1866.
[291] Have you been Vaccinated? and What Protection is Vaccination against Smallpox? By William J. Collins, M.D. Fourth edition. London, 1868.
[CHAPTER XLIII.]
HOUSE OF COMMONS COMMITTEE, 1871.
On 13th February, 1871, Mr. W. E. Forster moved that a Select Committee be appointed to inquire into the operation of the Vaccination Act of 1867, and to report whether such Act should be amended. Mr. Forster’s remarks on the occasion are noteworthy, as manifesting the prevalent prejudice. He said—
I make the motion in compliance with a promise made to the Member for Sunderland last session, who had brought in a Bill to relax the punishment for refusal to permit Vaccination. I do not imagine that Mr. Candlish, more than any other member of the House, has the slightest doubt of the utility and necessity of Vaccination, and that it is necessary not only to encourage the practice, but to make it compulsory. Opposition to Vaccination is not heard in the House of Commons; but it is found, I am sorry to say, among certain persons in the country, who have carried their resistance to an extent that has been injurious to health and destructive to life. [Evolution this from Forster’s fancy.] These people must have forgotten the state of the country before Vaccination was introduced.
Then followed the usual fabulous matter of rote—the awful mortality prior to vaccination, the reduction of that mortality by vaccination, the extraordinary immunity enjoyed by the vaccinated and revaccinated, and so forth—uttered and accepted as indisputable.
The Government do not entertain any doubt of the efficacy and advantages of Vaccination, nor of the necessity of enforcing it. They have to contend with opposition—the opposition of ignorance, and also, I am sorry to say, with the opposition arising from interested motives [What possibly could they be?] preying upon that ignorance; and lastly, with the great neglect arising from apathy.