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220
such modifications as are recommended for the diminution of
attendant risks. The precedent established in the case of the
abolition of compulsory church rates might be followed with
advantage. In that case all machinery for laying and collecting
the rate was left intact though the power of enforcement
was taken away. The effect of our recommendation, if adopted,
would be that vaccination would continue to be provided as at
present for those who desire to avail themselves of it, but efforts
to secure vaccination would be limited to moral influence—in a
word, the whole country would be in the position of those unions
in which the guardians have abandoned compulsion.
The grounds on which we object to the enforcement of
vaccination by penalties necessarily lead us also to object to any
method of indirect compulsion. We regard as both expedient
and unjust exclusion from any branch of public service because
of the refusal to submit to vaccination or re-vaccination. The
injustice is perhaps most severely felt in the case of candidates for
employment as pupil-teachers in public elementary schools.
There are now districts in which, owing to the general opposition
to vaccination, scarcely a girl or boy can be found who is legally
eligible, and candidates have to be brought in at great inconvenience
from surrounding districts. The existence of an
exceptional case or cases in which such rejected candidates have,
at some time afterwards, taken small-pox is, in our view, no justification
for the continuation of this grievance. Statistics
furnished to the Commission prove that large numbers of
vaccinated or re-vaccinated persons have taken the disease; and
we are not aware of any evidence to show that vaccinated pupilteachers
have any special immunity. If our recommendations
were carried out the danger of contagion would be greatly
diminished in schools, as elsewhere.
On the whole, then, while there is much in the report of our
colleagues from which we dissent, and we have accordingly
abstained with reluctance from adding our signatures to theirs,