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re-opened the whole question in the minds of many who accept
this modified view of the Jennerian practice. As Commissioners
commanded to consider and report on " provisions of the Vaccination
Acts with respect to prosecutions for non-compliance with the
law," we cannot avoid a reconsideration of this issue, which has
very much to do with the unsettlement of public opinion on the
Acts in question.
It cannot be denied that the law, as it stands, is of a very
exceptional character. It is the only instance under our Constitution
of the universal enforcement by fine and imprisonment of a
surgical operation. In all other cases preventive sanitary law
affects only outward circumstances, such as light and air,
sewerage, overcrowding, public exposure of infected persons, and
the like. In all such cases the social interests are so direct and
predominant, and the individual claims affected are so slight, or so
merely mercenary—as in the case of owners of insanitary
premises—that the reasons for compulsion are simple and uncomplicated
by any delicate question of personal rights. But compulsory
vaccination goes beyond outward circumstances, and
invades the integrity of the healthy body. It requires a wound,
however slight, to be inflicted on every healthy infant born, and
the contraction of a disease, however slight, of the successful
cultivation of which the vaccinating surgeon must satisfy himself.
The law gives the parent or guardian no option as to incurring
the possible dangers of the operation. In all other cases he is
allowed to decide on his own responsibility whether he will follow
a particular medical prescription or not. But in this he must
accept the operation with all its dangers, real or imaginary, at the
dictation of the law. He may believe that he has lost previous
children through the effects of vaccination. But nevertheless he
must run the risk again, or be treated as a criminal. It may
fairly be conceded that a compulsory law of this nature requires
justification different both in kind and degree from that of laws
affecting ordinary nuisances.
The case, as put before Parliament in 1853, seemed