xxxviii] THE ANTI-VACCINATION CRUSADE 353 



the two diagrams for a few moments I replied that they were 

 drawn on different scales, but that with that exception I 

 could see no substantial difference between them. The other 

 diagram was on a greatly exaggerated vertical scale, so that 

 the line showing each year's death-rate went up and down 

 with tremendous peaks and chasms, while mine approximated 

 more to a very irregular curve. But my questioner could not 

 see this simple point ; and later he recurred to it a second 

 time, and asked me if I really meant to tell them that those 

 two diagrams were both accurate, and when I said again that 

 though on different scales both represented the same facts, he 

 looked up at the ceiling with an air which plainly said, " If 

 you will say that you will say anything ! " 



The Commission lingered on for six years, and did not 

 issue its final report till 1896, while the evidence, statistics, and 

 diagrams occupied numerous bulky blue-books. The most 

 valuable parts of it were the appendices, containing the 

 tables and diagrams presented by the chief witnesses, 

 together with a large number of official tables and statistics, 

 both of our own and foreign countries, affording a mass 

 of material never before brought together. This enabled 

 me to present the general statistical argument more com- 

 pletely and forcibly than I had done before, and I devoted 

 several months of very hard work to doing this, and brought 

 it out in pamphlet form in January, 1898, in order that a 

 copy might be sent to every member of the House of 

 Commons before the new Vaccination Act came up for dis- 

 cussion. This was done by the National Anti- Vaccination 

 League, and I wrote to the half-dozen members I knew 

 personally, begging them to give one evening to its careful 

 perusal. But so far as any of their speeches showed, not one 

 of the six hundred and seventy members gave even that 

 amount of their time to obtain information on a subject in- 

 volving the health, life, and personal freedom of their con- 

 stituents. Yet I know that in no work I have written have I 

 presented so clear and so conclusive a demonstration of the 

 fallacy of a popular belief as is given in this work, which was 

 entitled " Vaccination a Delusion : its Penal Enforcement a 



VOL. II. 2 A 



