500 PARLIAMENTARY REPORT ON VACCINATION. 
children of parents who, while not denying their duty or 
desiring to disregard it, postpone its fulfilment, and who 
from carelessness or forgetfulness delay to protect their 
children until driven to the vaccine station by the panic fear 
of an epidemic. 3. There are the children of those parents, 
very few in proportion to the whole population, who assert 
that vaccination will do harm. 
“ With regard to the first and second of these classes, 
there can hardly be any objection to the principle of a com- 
pulsory law, though there may be practical difficulties in its 
application ; but in dealing with the third class, it becomes 
necessary to weigh the claims of the parent to control as 
he thinks fit the medical treatment of an infant child, as 
against the duty of the State to protect the health of the 
community, and to save the child itself from a dreadful 
disease. 
“ While weighing these conflicting claims, your committee 
have had to consider the effect of the change in the law 
introduced by the Act of 1867, which, contrary to the provi- 
sions of the previous English or present Irish Acts, makes 
the parent liable to repeated convictions and penalties for not 
allowing his child to be vaccinated. 
“ There appear to have been several cases of infliction of 
more than one fine or imprisonment in regard to the same 
child ; and your committee, though by no means admitting 
the right of the parent to expose his child or his neighbours 
to the risk of smallpox, must express great doubt whether 
the object of the law is gained by thus continuing a long 
contest with the convictions of the parent. 
“ The public opinion of the neighbourhood may sympa- 
thise with a person thus prosecuted, and may in consequence 
be excited against the law ; and, after all, though the parent 
be fined or imprisoned, the child may remain unvaccinated. 
In such a case the law can only triumph by the forcible vac- 
cination of the child. 
“In enactments of this nature, when the State, in attempt- 
ing to fulfil the duty, finds it necessary to disregard the wish 
of the parent, it is most important to secure the support of 
public opinion ; and as your committee cannot recommend 
that a policeman should be empowered to take a baby from 
its mother to the vaccine station, a measure which could only 
be justified by an extreme necessity, they would recommend 
that whenever in any case two penalties or one full penalty 
have been imposed upon a parent, the magistrate should not 
impose any further penalty in respect of the same child. 
“ It has been suggested that the parent’s declaration of 
