oard was likely
to go to the trouble of working up a case and to the expense of bringing
it before the court, when, to produce a complete defence, the defendant
need only declare that he had a conscientious objection to the law under
which the information was laid against him? Many idle or obstinate or
prejudiced people would develop conscientious objections to anything
which gives trouble or that they happen to dislike. For instance, if the
same principle were applied to education, I believe that within a very
few years not twenty-five per cent. of the children belonging to the
classes that are educated out of the rates would ever pass the School
Board standards.

Thus it came about that the harvest was ripe, and over ripe, awaiting
only the appointed sickle of disease. Once or twice already that sickle
had been put in, but always before the reaping began it was stayed by
the application of the terrible rule of isolation known as the improved
Leicester system.

Among some of the natives of Africa when smallpox breaks out in a kraal,
that kraal is surrounded by guards and its inhabitants are left to
recover or perish, to starve or to feed themselves as chance and
circumstance may dictate. During the absence of the smallpox laws the
same plan, more mercifully applied, prevailed in England, and thus
the evil hour was postponed. But it was only postponed, for like a
cumulative tax it was heaping up against the country, and at last the
hour had come for payment to an authority whose books must be balanced
without remittance or reduction. What is due to nature that nature takes
in her own way and season, neither less nor more, unless indeed the
skill and providence of man can find means to force her to write off the
debt.

Five days after my encounter with the red-headed vagrant, the following
paragraph appeared in one of the local papers: "Pocklingham. In the
casual ward of the Union house for this district a tramp, name unknown,
died last night. He had been admitted on the previous evening, but, for
some unexplained reason, it was not noticed until the next morning that
he suffered from illness, and, therefore, he was allowed to mix with
the other inmates in the general ward. Drs. Butt and Clarkson, who were
called in to attend, state that the cause of death was the worst form of
smallpox. The body will be buried in quicklime, but some alarm is felt
in the district owing to the deceased, who, it is said, arrived here
f