OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume III, Issue 349, 10 September 1889, Page 4

OUR SYDNEY LETTER.

[raoa oub own correspondent.] Ar ter a period of very exemplary selfrestraint in which some urgently needed measures have been advanced towards completion, the Opposition seem disposed to make trouble. Last night they made an organised attempt to oust the Government •>y a sidewind on some trumpery question as to whether the Treasurer should make his financial statement before bringing in the estimates or vice versa. There can be no doubt that they are numerous enough to block all business, to force a crisis, and thus to plunge the affairs of the country in con* fusion. But whether the country would thank them for so doing is another matter. It would mean the casting to the four winds of the legislative work that has already been done. It would set back the hands on the dial-plate of progress by many degrees, and the only end to be served by the political turmoil into which the country would be plunged, would be that certain political agitators who find their account in unrest rather than in assured peace and progressive prosperity, might bring their names prominently before the country with the chance of political preferment as the result, I don’t think the Opposition were generously treated when they were ousted from office. But two wrongs don't make a right. It is sincerely to be hoped that they will finish the session in the same manner as they began it, and allow some of the vexed questions which have engaged their attention to receive at least a temporary settlement. Another unworthy piece of business is the getting up of a shallow and superficial cry against the Pacific mail service. It costs very little, it forms a direct link between Australia and the great American republic, and affords facilities both for commerce and communication which it would be very bard to replace. Yet all these considerations are being ignored, and an outcry is being made against tbe service on the grounds, forsooth, that prison made goods are imported from the United States. It cannot be seriously contended that such goods arrive in any considerable quantity that would be worth a moment’s notice as affecting the national welfare. But tbe charge is made because it is thought that tbe working man is too ignorant to discover its fallacy, that his passions Will be aroused by it, and that in blind rage be wiil. support tbe party which professes tn champion his fancied interests. For my own part I imagine that the working man is much more clear sighted as to both facts and motives than his would-be exploiters believe. But the tactics are none the less despicable, and it is a pity that a cause wbich presents many good points should be disgraced by them, Cynical observers profess to find the real solution of the recent display of turbulence in the fact that tbe Payment of Members Bill is hardly likely to become law thia cession. When it was sent up to the Council it was discovered that it contained an important technical flaw which nullifies the measure. An amendment was carried, but was not duly embodied in tbe Bill, which, therefore, must ba divided against itself. If thia is the fact, a Nemesis baa epeedily overtaken the overhearing pretensions of the Representative Chamber. They maintain that the Council oas no right tn amend the measure, and they ihemsalves have passed it. By tbsir own i bowing, therefore, unless tbe Council exercise a power which tbe Assembly declares it does not possess, the Bill must remain in its fcteeut stale of lelLeoofessed incompetence ... . ■

and On the o her hand, if, in order to get hold of the cash, the Assembly concedes the right of the Council to amend the Bill in thia respect, it must concede its right to amend it in any other. In the latter case it is not likely that the provision wbich permits members to set the dangerous and indecent precedent of voting public money into their own pockets will be allowed to stand. Had the measure been passed, and members allowed to draw their pay forthwith, it may seriously be questioned whether there would be so much zeal to terminate the session. The Bourbons learnt nothing, and forgot nothing. So says the famous French mot, and it is quite as applicable to despotisms of all kinds as to that of the Bourbons. Especially does it describe that self-perpetuat-ing professional despotism, which takes its stand on soma ancient but lucrative tradition, and seeks to set the law of the land in motion to enforce it on all men. These remarks are prompted by the recent action of the Medical Board of New South Wales, who have addressed a memorial to the Government urging the establishment of compulsory vaccination, on the plea that it is “ the only known means of successfully avoiding the ravages of pox.” They have not yet learnt that unvaccinated New South Wales has withstood the attacks of several outbreaks of small-pox quite as successfully as compulsorilyvaccinated Victoria. They have not yet learnt that the ravages of emall-pox in vaccinated Great Britain and in revaccinated Germany are so terrible and far-reaching as to demonstrate the inefficiency of the supposed preventative. They have not yet learnt that every vaccination or inoculation is an experiment in the dark, and that it involves the risk of implanting loathsome, possibly fatal, disease in the helpless subject. As a matter of practical politics, they have not yet learnt that vaccination laws are becoming unworkable in all countries where discussion is not burked by a “ conspiracy of silence ” on the part of the press. They have not yet learned that in Tasmania at the present moment it has been found necessary to suspend the operation of the law, that in England it is breaking down by its own weight, many fathers and mothers refusing to subject their children to the horrible and revolting risks involved—risks against which no conceivable amount of care and skill can adequately insure them, They have failed to learn that enlightened public opinion is now setting against the ridiculous and daegerots practice of cowpoxing people as strongly as it once set in its favor, and that the change iu opinion is amply justified by the facts as set foith in such standard and impartial authorities as the Encyclopedia Britannica. These are a few of the things wbich the Medical Board has failed to learr.

It may be asked how it is possible that the faculty which is supposed to know all about health and disease should be found takingjiheir stand on the side of disease, cowpox, to wit, to say nothing of syphilis, erysipelas, pyemia or blood poisoning, and thereat. But the answer is simple. When vaccination was adopted by the State, it proved immensely lucrative to the profession and was at once erected into an article of faith. Henceforth no practitioner might hope for a diploma unless he subscribed to it. And as long as the prospect of greatly increased incomes is dangled before the profession by the hope of getting compulsory powers, or so long as the possession of compulsory powers appeals strongly to their pockets, so long will the truth be obscured in the very puce where it ought to rule. But let the practice stand on its own merits, above all things make the practitioner strictly responsible fer the results of his action, and the truth will soon assert itself—the truth that is already patent to any one who has eyes to see, and who examines the subject from all sides, namely that vaccination is dangerous in itself, and useless as a prophylactic, and that furthermore it is ridiculous and revolting.