y a
Government with a great majority, and a House of Commons composed of
members who, for the most part, were absolute believers in its virtues.
Never before did agitators meet with so vast and complete a success, and
seldom perhaps did a Government undertake so great a responsibility for
the sake of peace, and in order to shelve a troublesome and dangerous
dispute. It was a very triumph of opportunism, for the Government, aided
and abetted by their supporters, threw over their beliefs to appease a
small but persistent section of the electors. Convinced that compulsory
vaccination was for the benefit of the community, they yet stretched
the theory of the authority of the parent over the child to such
an unprecedented extent that, in order to satisfy his individual
prejudices, that parent was henceforth to be allowed to expose his
helpless infant to the risk of terrible disease and of death.

It is not for me to judge their motives, which may have been pure and
excellent; my own are enough for me to deal with. But the fact remains
that, having power in their hands to impose the conclusions of a
committee of experts on the nation, and being as a body satisfied as
to the soundness of those conclusions, they still took the risk of
disregarding them. Now the result of their action is evident; now we
have reaped the seed which they sowed, nor did they win a vote or a
"thank you" by their amiable and philosophic concessions, which earned
them no gratitude but indignation mingled with something not unlike
contempt.

So much for the anti-vaccination agitation, on the crest of whose wave I
was carried to fortune and success. Thenceforward for many long years my
career was one of strange and startling prosperity. Dunchester became
my pocket borough, so much so, indeed, that at the three elections which
occurred before the last of which I have to tell no one even ventured to
contest the seat against me. Although I was never recognised as a leader
of men, chiefly, I believe, because of a secret distrust which was
entertained as to my character and the sincerity of my motives, session
by session my parliamentary repute increased, till, in the last Radical
Government, I was offered, and for two years filled, the post of
Under-Secretary to the Home Office. Indeed, when at last we went to
the country over the question of the China War, I had in my pocket a
discreetly worded undertaking that, if our party succeeded at the polls,
my cla