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the Local Government Board, as well as to the Lord President of the
Council, and other Peers, a statement of the reasons for which I thought
the Bill entitled to support. In the result, the Bill passed through the
House of Commons, notwithstanding the opposition of the Government,
but having been utterly ruined by amendments moved by the Duke of
Richmond in Committee of the House of Lords, its promoters thought
it best to abandon the measure lest by its presence in the Statute
Book it should lead to a false notion that the question had been
settled, and thus discourage legislation at a more favorable time.
It is not a little remarkable that, while both parties in the State appear
agreed as to the necessity of protecting men against the consequences
of voluntary exposure of themselves to contagious disease, viz., by
locking up "unfortunate" women when in an infective state, and this at
the public expense, neither party should be able to recognize the propriety
of protecting the general public against involuntary exposure to
infection from small-pox, &c., viz., by removing the restrictions against
the free admission of poor persons into rate-supported hospitals, when
such persons are willing to enter them for the sake of isolation. At
the present moment, as already stated, no person having the electoral
privilege, whether householder or lodger, can go, or send a child, into
one of the hospitals of the Metropolitan Asylums Board, without incurring
the risk of losing his franchise: should a political opponent think
fit to object to his vote, it must be struck off the list.
But though such objection has only been made in one case hitherto,
to my knowledge, and, though it is not very probable that such objections
will ever be generally made, (if they were the hospitals would
be little used, the infectious diseases would spread, and after a time
a sensible modification of existing legislation would be effected ! ) yet
any man, voter or otherwise, who avails himself of the hospital, even
at the instance of the Sanitary Authority, and solely for the benefit of
the community, thereby becomes, legally, a pauper. And yet the
same man may have all his family vaccinated and re-vaccinated at the
public cost, paid out of the poor rate, without incurring the stigma of
pauperism, the sole object of such free vaccination being to protect the
individual and the community, as far as possible, against the danger
of small-pox!
When the public understand the bearings of this question judicious
legislation must follow, and the hospital treatment of small-pox will be