Vaccination with its proved benefits is outside the pale of party. After
long and careful study, science and the medical profession have given
a verdict in its favour, a verdict which has now been confirmed by the
experience of generations. Here I leave the question, and, turning once
more before I sit down to those great and general issues of which I
have already spoken, I would again impress upon this vast audience, and
through it upon the constituency at large," etc., etc., etc.
Within a year it was my lot to listen to an eminent leader of that
distinguished member (with the distinguished member's tacit consent)
pressing upon an astonished House of Commons the need of yielding to
the clamour of the anti-vaccinationists, and of inserting into the Bill,
framed upon the report of a Royal Commission, a clause forbidding the
prosecution of parents or guardians willing to assert before a bench of
magistrates that they objected to vaccination on conscientious grounds.
The appeal was not in vain; the Bill passed in its amended form; and
within twenty years I lived to see its fruits.
At length came the polling day. After this lapse of time I remember
little of its details. I, as became a Democratic candidate, walked
from polling-station to polling-station, while my opponent, as became
a wealthy banker, drove about the city in a carriage and four.
Pages:
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133