Thus belated, thus after infinite mischief to the public health, the Nestor of Medicine appears and solemnly allows that the warning of William Cobbett, given seventy years before, was a true warning, and that worthy of praise are the wise parents who give it heed. Cobbett, grateful for escape from compulsory vaccination, overlooked, I said, the danger perpetuated through the endowment of the practice. He was overjoyed at Canning’s emphatic declaration, that “he could not imagine any circumstances whatever that would induce him to follow up the most favourable report of the infallibility of vaccination with any measure for its compulsory infliction.” Hence he continued-- I am glad to perceive that the Ministry took care to intimate their decided hostility to any law for propagating Cowpox by _force_, by the aid of _pains_ and _penalties_. This being the case, I care little about Mr. Rose and his Cowpox Institution. Those who choose to have their children impregnated from that shop, will be at liberty to do so; and those who wish to avoid it, may. This is all right; though it may be very foolish for Government to interfere in such a matter. I think we may thank the events at Ringwood for the ministerial protest against compulsory measures. It would have been curious enough to see people paying penalties for being so obstinate as not to consult their own health, or that of their children. What Cobbett thought would be “curious enough” we witness daily. English liberty, if it has advanced in some directions, has gone back in others since Cobbett wrote. Parents are now haled before magistrates, fined and imprisoned, because (knowing that vaccination cannot avert smallpox, whilst it may seriously injure the health of their children, and even cost them their lives) they refuse to submit to the infliction. Never, perhaps, was there a more impious invasion of liberty than compulsory vaccination, and yet we have free and enlightened Englishmen who excuse and defend it! These are the Pharisees of Liberalism, blatant over tyranny, extinct or foreign, but dull to similar tyranny within their own domain. They garnish the sepulchres of the prophets of freedom, but (in their petty measure) repeat the deeds of those who persecuted and slew them. Lastly, in the article from which I have been quoting, Cobbett assumed that the resort to the House of Commons for money was evidence that the enthusiasm for vaccination was abating. He wrote--