to give
evidence. At length this commission delivered itself of its final
report, a very sensible one in an enormous blue-book, which if adopted
would practically have continued the existing Vaccination Acts with
amendments. These amendments provided that in future the public
vaccinator should visit the home of the child, and, if the conditions
of that home and of the child itself were healthy, offer to vaccinate it
with glycerinated calf lymph. Also they extended the time during which
the parents and guardians were exempt from prosecution, and in various
ways mitigated the rigour of the prevailing regulations. The subject
matter of this report was embodied in a short Bill to amend the law and
laid before Parliament, which Bill went to a standing committee, and
ultimately came up for the consideration of the House.

Then followed the great debate and the great surprise. A member moved
that it should be read that day six months, and others followed on the
same side. The President of the Local Government Board of the day, I
remember, made a strong speech in favour of the Bill, after which other
members spoke, including myself. But although about ninety out of every
hundred of the individuals who then constituted the House of Commons
were strong believers in the merits of vaccination, hardly one of them
rose in his place to support the Bill. The lesson of Dunchester amongst
others was before their eyes, and, whatever their private faith might
be, they were convinced that if they did so it would lose them votes at
the next election.

At this ominous silence the Government grew frightened, and towards the
end of the debate, to the astonishment of the House and of the country,
the First Lord of the Treasury rose and offered to insert a clause by
virtue of which any parent or other person who under the Bill would
be liable to penalties for the non-vaccination of a child, should be
entirely freed from such penalties if within four months of its birth
he satisfied two justices of the peace that he conscientiously believed
that the operation would be prejudicial to that child's health. The Bill
passed with the clause, which a few days later was rejected by the
House of Lords. Government pressure was put upon the Lords, who thereon
reversed their decision, and the Bill became an Act of Parliament.

Thus the whole policy of compulsory vaccination, which for many years
had been in force in England, was destroyed at a single blow b