lion. (Cheers.) Ireland twenty years be- crops, and then came a good crop. fore 1864 had an average of four hundred (Laughter.) There were, he should exand three per million. From 1864 to 1874, plain, three kinds of small-pox. In the a period including a great epidemic, the first kind, the pustules were well sepaaverage was one hundred and eight per rated, and the disease was rarely fatal. million, and from 1875 to 1882 it was only In the second kind- namely, confluent eighty-two per million. (Hear, hear.) He small-pox, the pustules ran together. repeated what he had said in a previous From this disease fifty per cent. of the debate on this subject, that vaccination unvaccinated died, and fifteen per cent. of had stamped out small-pox in Scotland. the vaccinated. The third kind was black Stamping out, it should be remembered, or malignant small-pox, which was happily was not the same as keeping out a disease. very rare, for ninety-five per cent. of those He derived the expression from the Cat-attacked by it died. Malignant small-pox tle Plague Commission, of which he was had only been seen in this country once a member. They never supposed that in the present century. The epidemic their proposals would keep any great epi- which struck us in 1871 arose in France demic out of the country, but they said in 1870. Just as when the wars of the that when it entered the country, these Red and White Roses broke out, black provisions were sufficient to stamp it out. death followed in the train of the camps, This was exactly what had happened in so did small-pox follow in the train of the Scotland with regard to small-pox when Germans and French during the war. that country was visited by the epidemic The year before the war from thirty-five in 1872-73. Children all over the country to forty thousand French soldiers, and were re-vaccinated, and the disease was 216,426 Prussians soldiers were revaccistamped out. (Cheers.) nated. There was, however, not time to revaccinate a'large number of the French recruits who came from Brittany, where small-pox was prevalent, and from other parts of the country. The physician-general of the French army (Dr. Leon Colin) had placed it on record "that the differ ent armies raised in haste and placed in the field without time for revaccination were exposed, both at their places of gathering and in their marches, to the attack of the epidemic." The result was that while 23,499 French soldiers died of small-pox, the mortality among the Germans did not exceed 263 deaths. (Hear, hear.) He had seen it stated in certain papers that the great mortality in the French army caused by small-pox was one of the misfortunes resulting from the siege of Paris. It was the fact, however, that only sixteen hundred deaths from small-pox had occurred in Paris during the entire duration of the siege and therefore it was mere trifling to say that the vast loss of life in the French army caused by this disease was the result of that siege. (Hear, hear.) It had also been stated that the German constitution was less susceptible to the attacks of small-pox than was that of the French, but this assertion had been disproved by the fact that when the epidemic reached Berlin in 1861 large numbers of persons died from its effects. This epidemic having passed through France during the war became pandemic, because it went not only all over Europe, but through North and South America, and extended even to the South Sea Another argument on which his honorable friends laid much stress was that small-pox was not affected by vaccination, but that its diminution was the result of improved sanitation. Now, if sanitation affected smallpox so greatly, it must affect all other diseases equally. But between the period of gratuitous vaccination (18401853) and the period of compulsory vaccination (1871-1883) the mortality from small-pox among children under five years of age decreased by eighty per cent., while the mortality among such children from all other diseases decreased by only six per cent. (Hear, hear.) What then became of the argument that the great diminution of small-pox was due to improved sanitation? He would now examine the figures of his honorable friends. They spoke of forty thousand deaths from small-pox in a year, but it should be noted that they confined their attention to periods when great epidemics occurred, and did not take the averages of long periods. (Hear, hear.) He thought that upon the occurrence of epidemics the strongest arguments in favor of vaccination could be founded. Recent advances in science had proved that diseases were due to the growth of minute organisms in the body, and there were good crops and bad crops of these organisms, just as there were good years and bad years for plums, apples, and pears. (Laughter.) Thus there were good and bad years for small-pox, measles, scarlet fever, etc. There were generally three years of bad Islands, and it struck this country very severely. Our army at home then consisted of ninety-two thousand men, and, they having all been revaccinated, the disease only killed forty-two men altogether in two years. (Hear.) The mortality among our civilian population reached nine hundred and twenty-eight in the million or one-third of that of the last century. The pandemic struck London far more heavily than it did the country districts, and the consequence was that the death-rate from this disease in that year was two thousand four hundred and twenty per million, or about half of that of the last century. It might be asked why this disease had attacked London, which might be regarded as being well vaccinated, so severely. It must be remembered, however, that only about ninety-five per cent. of the population were vaccinated, and there were one hundred and ninety thousand of the population unvaccinated, besides those who had been imperfectly vaccinated, and who, there fore, afforded fertile soil for the growth of the small-pox germs. The pandemic which had swept over the whole country in 1871-72, and had passed away, broke out again in London with considerable violence in 1877, and again in 1881, when the death-rate from this disease was six hundred and forty per million that for the whole country being only one hundred per million. The anti-vaccinationists asserted that more vaccinated than unvaccinated people were attacked by small-pox. That was perfectly true, but it was capable of an easy explanation. In 1871 there were three million of children under five years of age in the kingdom, and these might be divided into two classes those who were vaccinated being thirty or forty times more numerous than those who were unvaccinated. The two classes were intermixed, they resided in like houses, they ate like food, and they breathed the same epidemic air. But in the larger class the deaths were only seventeen hundred and eighty, while in the smaller class they were four hundred and thirteen, the rate of mortality from this disease, therefore, being from one hundred and twenty to one hundred and sixty times as large in the smaller class as it was in the larger class. (Hear, hear.) The registrar-general showed that, taking the whole community of this kingdom, there was only one death among the vaccinated for every forty-four among the unvaccinated. (Hear, hear.) The honorable member had asked how it was that there had been so few deaths from this disease in Leicester during recent years, although the inhabitants had notoriously neglected vaccination. All he could say was that during recent years the deaths from this disease in certain towns had been very small, although during the epidemic of 1871 the number of deaths from small-pox in Leicester was three hundred and thirteen. On this point he would refer to the case of Leipsic, which for eighteen years before 1870 had zealously supported the anti-vaccination movement, and during that period there had only been twenty-nine deaths from small-pox, although vaccination had been greatly neglected in the town. When the pandemic reached Leipsic in 1871 the town had a population of one hundred and seven thousand inhabitants, and the disease attacked one thousand and twentyseven, or nine thousand six hundred per million, and out of 23,892 children under fifteen years of age, seven hundred and fifteen died, being thirty thousand per million. The statistics of the London epidemic were prepared with great care, and the mortality among the vaccinated was ninety per million, while among the unvaccinated it was three thousand three hundred and fifty per million. In the hospitals forty-five per cent. of the unvaccinated and fifteen per cent. of the vaccinated died. The opponents of vaccination simply exclaimed "Incredible!" and said they did not believe the statistics, which were those of medical men. In America the deaths of the unvaccinated were fifty per cent. in Boston, sixty-four per cent. in Philadelphia, fifty-four per cent. in Montreal, and the mortality among the vaccinated was from fifteen to seventeen per cent. Opponents sometimes said that smallpox was decreasing naturally, and sometimes that it was increasing in spite of all vaccination. When they said it was decreasing they said other diseases were increasing. Did they wish to go back to the golden age when every human being had small-pox as a precaution against other diseases? (Hear, hear.) Each disease had its specific character, and you might as well expect to produce a rose from a cauliflower or a mastiff from a guinea-pig as erysipelas or cancer from diseased vaccine virus. The increase of bronchitis had no connection with smallpox or vaccination; and erysipelas and scrofula had no relation to the question before them. He admitted that man was mortal. (Laughter.) Take away One large source of disease and the deaths from others must increase. (Hear, hear.) To say that the increase was owing to vaccination was equal in logic to saying that the few cases of small-pox in Ireland were the cause of the outburst of Fenian assassination. (Laughter.) The foe was still at our doors, and precaution was still necessary. The form of small-pox which reached us in 1871 and 1872 was the same form of it that killed Queen Mary, the wife of William III. Macaulay said, "The plague had visited our shores only once or twice within living memory, but the small-pox was always present, filling the churchyards with corpses, leaving on those whose lives it spared the hideous traces of its power, turning the babe into a changeling at which its mother shuddered, and making the eyes and cheeks of the betrothed maiden objects of horror to the lover." This was the disease; if we allowed it to make headway we must be prepared for the consequences. (Cheers.) It was not less malignant than before; it had only been subdued by vaccination. What did the personal liberty argument mean? If a man could take small-pox and isolate himself we might have no right to interfere with his doing so. (Hear.) He might burn down a solitary house if that involved no danger to others. But every man with small-pox was a distinct focus of contagion, and must injure the whole community. We did forbid a man injuring himself or others by entering or leaving a railway train in motion. We limited hours of labor. By vaccination we operated upon children who could not protect themselves in order to save them from omissional infanticide, from the omission of a duty which the parent did not know ought to be performed. The question for the House to decide on the evidence he had laid before it was whether they were prepared at that time to relax all the measures that had been taken, and successfully taken, to mitigate this great disease, and again to allow it to go unchecked throughout the country. (Loud cheers.) After a few words from Mr. P. Taylor in reply, Sir J. Pease's amendment was withdrawn, and SIR L. PLAYFAIR moved the following amendment: "That in the opinion of this House the practice of vaccination has greatly lessened the mortality from smallpox, and that laws relating to it, with such modiñcations as experience may suggest, are necessary for the prevention and mitigation of this fatal and mutilative dis ease." From All The Year Round. Now that the Queensland government is probably going to annex New Guinea, I for one hope that they, being so much more within reach, will manage matters better than we, with more than half the world's circumference between us, have been able to do in New Zealand. Our management somehow resulted in HauHau, that terrible travesty of missionary teaching dashed with determination to cling to the land that was slipping from their grasp, which was described in All the Year Round some four years ago. The Maoris were worthy of a better fate. I suppose they must go, though they will leave a good deal of their blood in the veins of the colonists. Mr. Delisle Hay, who talks of New Zealand as "brighter Britain," and is far above any such weakness as "Maoriland for the Maoris,” admits that they had arts and industries of no mean kind. Their dwellings, often highly decorated with carving, were far superior to Irish cabins, ay, to too many English cottages. Their pals were fortified on a system quite equal to that of Vauban. They were careful tillers of the soil; and with nothing but stone axes and shark's-tooth knives, they would cut down the huge kauri pines and shape their war-canoes with an accuracy that would stand the test of geometrical instruments. A canoe with forty or fifty paddles on a side would be driven as fast as a steam-ram or a racing-skiff. Wooden statues, picturewriting on rocks and trees, image amulets, showed strong artistic leanings, though among artists the môku (tattooers) ranked highest. Great was the request in which clever workers were held. fought to secure possession of them; and of several the poetical biographies are still current. To an Englishman's notions their highest artistic attainment was the making of what are incorrectly called "mats," togas, that is, of flax-fibre, some as soft as silk, some interwoven with Battles were kiwi's feathers, which were stitched in so | tlers and natives. Mr. Hay speaks of a thickly as to make the fabric look like girl, "a delicious little brown innocent," fur. Such a robe would take several who brought her husband ten thousand women two or three years to make it, for acres of good rich land; though, on the the kiwi's feathers are almost as thin as principle that the land belongs to the coarse hairs. tribe, and not to the chief, I do not quite see how that could be. The main drawback is one that was equally felt of old in Ireland and Scotland-you marry your wife's kindred, and they all think they have a right to come and feed upon you in any numbers, and for any length of time. If her tribe was a large one, even the brown innocent's ten thousand acres would not go a very great way. I for one don't think they have improved. I would far rather see a chief in his toga and môku than dressed in a bad imitation of our costume. And they do dress nowadays. Mr. Hay tells of a young lady in pale green silk with lace trimmings, panier and train, lace collar and cuffs, pink.satin bows, gorgeous cameo brooch, gold watch-chain, and lavender kid gloves. She wore a white hat looped up on one side, trimmed with dark green velvet, and adorned with flowers, a long ostrich feather, and a stuffed humming bird. She had a huge chignon; a laced parasol in one hand, and a feathery fan in the other; and dainty boots on her little feet. So long as she was in the settlement this gay beauty wholly ignored all her kindred, walking in solitary grandeur, proud of her "Englishness." But when she got outside, she fell in with two or three old Maori women, as filthy and ugly as such women always are, and before long she had her silk skirts turned up, and was squatting amongst them, enjoying a hearty smoke. Such a lady is not likely to make flax-fibre mats, though she does (in spite of her grand airs) look after her husband's cooking. You will meet her riding by his side in a blue velveteen habit, with hat and feather to match, he, too, being considerably " got up," from his white helmet down to his spurred boots; and when, next day, you accept their invitation, and call upon them, you find the fair Amazon in a dirty blanket and nothing else, squatted beside the dinner-pot smoking a short pipe. Her husband, when he comes in, will be angry, but only because she did not do honor to her pakeha guest by appearing in full pakeha costume. Mr. Hay witnessed a strange and embarrassing ceremony; the husband actually dressed his wife in her best clothes before his very eyes; and when it was done he proudly said: "You come see common Maori, sah? You come find pakeha gentleman, pakeha lady, pakeha house! Good, good. Now you sit talk to my missee; I get pakeha dinner." That is the new style, and somehow it does not seem to have much vitality in it. What I cannot understand is why there should be so few marriages between set These dress-stories show that the veneer of civilization is not very solid, and a great deal of the Christianity is only skin-deep. How can it be otherwise, when it is not (like ours) a thing which has been in the blood for over a thousand years, but is far newer than the muskets and the fire-water which have so sadly hastened the decay of the race? Many a tattooed Christian still believes that the spirits of good men (in old time it was brave chiefs) have a long and toilsome journey to make to the far north, where, from a great projecting rock they leap into the sea and swim across to "Three Kings' Islands," which are the gate of Paradise. Many, too, still hold the ngarara a beautiful little green lizard to be awfully tapu. To throw one of these at a man is a deadly insult. Such an act nearly cost Mr. Hay his life. He had a lot of Maoris cutting lines through the bush for land-surveying, including two pious old fellows, Pita (Peter) and Pora (Paul), who used to hold a prayer-meeting every night, and who, by their comic look, their quaint affectation of childishness, and their love of laughter, reminded him of Irish peasants. One day, picking up a ngarara, he held it out to the old men, asking what it was, and threw it, saying "Catch!" when all at once they were transformed into fiends, yelling, dancing, singing their warsong. He thought at first it was a joke; but, just as they were going to fall on him with their axes, a couple of half-breeds hurried him off, crying: "Run for your life!" At night they were all good friends again, and Pita, lying by his side in camp, said: "We should certainly have killed you in our wild passion, and then have been very sorry for it. It's all over now, for we've had time to reflect that, being only an ignorant pakeha, you knew no better. Besides, we are Christians, though we had forgotten that for the moment." Such an anecdote shows what manner A very convenient way of forcing the trader's hand in the early days was to put his ship and cargo under tapu. This made it impossible for him to sail away, or to have dealings with any one else than the chief who had laid him under this embargo, and who, therefore, at last brought him to his own terms. One can fancy this was a natural way of making reprisals for the fancy prices which, we may be sure, the trader would exact. of men these Maoris are- people who | the fifth he was forced to send for the not only weep in church at the pathetic tohunga, who made him throw away his passages, but laugh uproariously at any clothes and pull down his kitchen. thing in lessons or sermon that tickles their fancy. Mr. Hay has seen a church full of them waving their arms, stamping their feet, grinding their teeth with rage, when the treachery of Judas was being related. To such people Christianity came as a new form of tapu (taboo). They were ready for any number of rites and ceremonies, and it was only when they began to read for themselves, and to contrast the teachings of the book with the conduct of the land-grabbing pakehas round them; when, moreover, their implicit faith in the missionary had been weakened by the coming in of rival faiths, each claiming to be the only true way, that they got to be eclectic, giving up the New Testament in its practical portions, and sticking by the Old, because it allowed polygamy and revenge, and strictly forbade the alienation of land. Many a massacre of whites was due to an unwitting infringement of the tapu; just as if you trespass on Lord Marlshire's covers in breeding-time, you'll find yourself subject to all sorts of pains and penalties, even though your object was the harmless one of plucking a butterfly orchis or a twayblade. The historic massacre of Du Fresne and his crew was brought about by a deliberate breach of This tapu had many uses. A river was tapu; and such outrages on native feeling tapu at certain seasons, so as to give a close were so dangerous, that Governor Mactime for fish; a wood was tapu when birds quarie, of Sydney, in 1813, tried to make were nesting, fruit ripening, or rats (delica- every skipper in the New Zealand trade cies in the old Maori cuisine) multiplying. sign a bond for one thousand pounds not To tapu a garden answered-till Captain to ill-treat Maoris, not to break tapu, not Cook brought in pigs-far better than to trespass on burial-grounds, not to kidthe strongest fence. A girl, tapued, would nap men or women. His efforts were be as safe amid the wild license of unmar- fruitless. Maoris were fine, sturdy felried Maori life as if she had been in a lows, and though there was, as yet, no nunnery. Tapu was probably never in- Kanaka labor-market in Queensland, no tentionally broken, so weird was the hor- Queensland at all in fact, a ship that was ror which surrounded it. But, in this short-handed was very glad to get some case, sinning in ignorance was no excuse; of them on board by any kind of device. and the most furious wars were those The worst thing connected with the carwhich arose from breaking it. The sign rying off of native women was that the of tapu was easily set up a bunch of poor creatures were generally put ashore flax or hair, a bone, a rag on a carved in some other part of the islands, i.e., stick, that was enough. To lift it was among enemies. There slavery, or worse, much harder, needing the intervention of was sure to be their fate. Hence more the tohunga (priest), who, by muttering than one massacre. A captain carried off incantations, and, above all, by making a chief's daughter, and left her two hunthe tabooed man eat a sweet potato (ku-dred miles down the coast, where she was mera), charmed it away. Judge Maning, who years ago wrote a book called by his own nickname, "The Pakeha Maori," became tapu through an act of humanity. He buried a skull which he saw lying with a number of other bones on the beach. Straightway his companions shrank from him; he had to sit apart at night, the food which they set before him he was to eat without touching, and when he neglected to do so they made off in a body, and warned his household of the plight in which he was coming back. When he got home the place was deserted. He held out for four days, but on made a slave of and finally eaten. What more natural than that the chief and his people should feel deadly hatred against all whites, having, as savages always have, the firm conviction that all whites belong to the same tribe, and therefore ought to suffer for one another's faults? Another cause for bloody reprisals was the treatment of the men who were taken on board. "I'm a chief," said one who was being driven with a rope's end, when incapable through sea-sickness, to some menial work. "You a chief!" scoffingly replied the master of the "Boyd," for that was the name of the ill-fated ship. "When you |