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181
"We are now in a position to state the reasons which led us
to recommend that repeated penalties should no longer be
enforced; indeed they will be apparent from what we have
already said.
"We do not doubt that the fact that penalties may be
repeated secures in some cases the vaccination of children who
would otherwise remain unvaccinated; but we believe that the
irritation which these repeated prosecutions create, when applied
in the case of those who honestly object to have their children
vaccinated, and the agitation and active propaganda of antivaccination
views which they foster in such cases, tend so greatly
to a disuse of the practice, in the district where such occurrences
take place, that in the result the number of children vaccinated is
less than it would have been had the power of repeated prosecution
never existed or been exercised. This seems to us to be the
crucial question. A law severe in its terms, and enforced with
great stringency, may be less effectual for its purpose than one of
less severity and which is put in force less uncompromisingly.
When this is the case it cannot be doubted that the law which
appears less severe is really the more effective. The ultimate
object of the law must be kept in view. The penalty was not
designed to punish a parent who may be considered misguided in
his views and unwise in his action, but to secure the vaccination
of the people. If a law less severe, or administered with less
stringency, would better secure this end, that seems to us conclusive
in its favour.
" If, then, we cannot look with any certainty to a change of
the authority whose duty it is to enforce the law as a means of
securing vaccination in those districts where it has already fallen
into disuse, it obviously follows that every endeavour should be
made so to frame and to administer the law that opposition to
vaccination should not spread to other districts, and that it should
cease or diminish in those parts of the country where it at present
prevails.