CHAPTER IX

FORTUNE

My return to Parliament meant not only the loss of a seat to the
Government, a matter of no great moment in view of their enormous
majority, but, probably, through their own fears, was construed by
them into a solemn warning not to be disregarded. Certain papers and
opposition speakers talked freely of the writing on the wall, and none
saw that writing in larger, or more fiery letters, than the members of
Her Majesty's Government. I believe that to them it took the form not of
Hebraic characters, but of two large Roman capitals, the letters A and
V.

Hitherto the anti-vaccinators had been known as troublesome people who
had to be reckoned with, but that they should prove strong enough to
wrest what had been considered one of the safest seats in the kingdom
out of the hands of the Unionists came upon the party as a revelation of
the most unpleasant order. For Stephen Strong's dying cry, of which the
truth was universally acknowledged, "_The A.V.'s have done it. Bravo the
A.V.'s!_" had echoed through the length and breadth of the land.

When a Government thinks that agitators are weak, naturally and properly
it treats them with contempt, but, when it finds that they are strong
enough to win elections, then their arguments become more worthy of
consideration. And so the great heart of the parliamentary Pharaoh began
to soften towards the anti-vaccinators, and of this softening the first
signs were discernible within three or four days of my taking my seat as
member for Dunchester.

I think I may say without vanity, and the statement will not be
contradicted by those who sat with me, that I made a good impression
upon the House from the first day I entered its doors. Doubtless its
members had expected to find in me a rabid person liable to burst into a
foam of violence at the word "vaccination," and were agreeably surprised
to find that I was much as other men are, only rather quieter than most
of them. I did not attempt to force myself upon the notice of the House,
but once or twice during the dinner hour I made a few remarks upon
subjects connected with public health which were received without
impatience, and, in the interval, I tried to master its forms, and to
get in touch with its temper.

In those far-away and long-forgotten days a Royal Commission had been
sitting for some years to consider the whole question of compulsory
vaccination; it was the same before which I had been called