The contest, be it repeated, is with the poor. “There is no getting over the fact,” says Dr. John Scott of Manchester, “that vaccination is hated among the working class, in Lancashire, at least.” Vaccination is hated, and rightly hated, and the law is set to overcome that hatred. Multitudes submit because they either know not how, or dread to do otherwise; but an honourable and increasing number prefer the better part—holding by what they recognise for right, resolved to obey God rather than man. It has been said, “The days of martyrdom, like those of miracles, have ceased”; but have they? The record of humble English folk, who, during the past thirty years, have withstood the infamous Vaccination Acts, bears witness to the contrary. Martyrdom and heroism are rarely recognised by those who occasion or dislike their manifestation: it is sympathy that opens the eyes to their appearance. Unknown or despised, these medical nonconformists have stood true to their faith in the order of nature against doctor-craft, and have counted nothing dear to them if so be they could preserve their children and conscience from outrage. They have been prosecuted with all the malice and pertinacity of petty authority—of Justice Shallow and Bumble; have been insulted from the judgment seat; have been fined to the uttermost farthing and loaded with uttermost costs, and this repeatedly; have had their goods and furniture distrained, and their homes broken up; have been sent to jail with hard labour, and subjected to every indignity and cruelty of the prison-house; have been hunted from parish to parish, and in despair driven to exile. And these have been Englishmen, the law English, and the time our own! The Master of the Rolls recently observed, “What is contrary to the feelings of every honest man cannot be the law of England—or, if it be, the sooner it ceases to be law the better.” It would be unfair to charge the injustice of the Vaccination Acts to the English people. To most of them their character and operation are unknown. The chief sufferers are hidden under the hatches of poverty, and are unable to make the land resound with their wrongs. Those, too, who essay to speak for them are confronted with that obdurate dulness with which the early Free-Traders had to contend when restriction was thought to be as good for commerce as cowpox is thought to be good for health in stopping smallpox. Mr. Bright, in praising the speeches of Mr. Villiers at Birmingham, 29th January, 1884, remarked—
I mention their publication to revive the strange and painful fact that during the years when those speeches—so convincing, so absolutely unanswerable, were spoken in the House of Commons, they were addressed, as it were, to men morally stone deaf. The arguments were not answered, the facts adduced were not disproved, the appalling suffering of the people was not denied.
A similar deafness to the oppression of compulsory vaccination prevails, though there are signs of awakening. Still it is not for those who suffer to wait on politicians. The words are trite, but true as trite—
“Know ye not,
Who would be free, themselves must strike the blow?”
Many are discovering that in union is strength. Combinations for mutual protection and insurance against penalties are multiplying. Resist and Organise is their watchword: organise, study the law, find out its weak places, make the most of them, harass its administrators, vote only for guardians who are opposed to compulsion; and, in short, do whatever is possible to frustrate the pernicious legislation.
Sometimes it is asked, “Why not obey the law and agitate for its repeal?” but the suggestion is designed for stultification. Suppose the Society of Friends had consented to take oaths until the law was adjusted to their consciences, would they not have been swearing to this day? Suppose some dissenters had not refused to pay church rates, when would church rates have been abolished? Suppose the Irish had submitted to English rule until convinced by reason of the wickedness and folly of their domination, how long would they have had to wait for the redress of their wrongs? Such questions might be run over pages, but to what purpose? All know (unless submerged in cant) that those who would have must take; and that no man’s rights can be entrusted to another’s good-will, be the trustee ever so just. Vaccination is a medical monopoly established, endowed, and enforced—a tyranny to be overthrown. Those who profit by it will never consent to its surrender, whatever the evidence of its inutility and mischief: it would be against experience to expect otherwise: and they will never be so valiant in defence of their monopoly, and so profuse in the assertion of its overwhelming advantages, as when its dissolution is imminent. The wise understand these things. There is, therefore, but one way in which to get rid of the incubus, and that way is outright resistance. Already such resistance has proved successful in several parts of the country. The law has been reduced to abeyance, and similar resistance will be rewarded with similar results. Moreover, further legislation in favour of vaccination has been checked. Parliament will pass no more Vaccination Acts. The plague thus far is stayed: the worst possible has been seen: the business is to clear away what remains.
It is sometimes said that vaccination is unnatural, and the saying is disregarded as unscientific or absurd. But is it unscientific? and is it absurd? Men deserve an order in Nature, and when they perceive that any procedure is at variance with that order, they instinctively condemn it as unnatural, though possibly they may be unable to give a philosophic account of their aversion.
We unite in the assertion that vaccination is unnatural, and when we are asked, Why? we answer, Because it is an operation which violates the order maintained in the formation of the blood. If we follow food into the stomach and attend to the processes of digestion, rejection, and assimilation—the infinite care, in short, with which blood is made, we shall start back with dislike, and even horror, from a practice which sets at naught all this care; which attacks the blood directly, and attacks it to poison it. Hence it is that vaccination is stigmatised as unnatural, being a process which not only reverses the course of Nature in blood-making, but doubly unnatural, as violating that course and poisoning its product.