ABSTRACT
Ga glad consent of the community to establish more hospitals. since nobody doubts the duty of healing the sick, nobody denies the harm done by the eXlstence of the specific complaints. The battle really ~athers round the point of supel'Vision, examination, and registratlon. This is the uctual matter in dispute between an ardent band advocating the extension of the Acts and an equally ardent phalanx, composed of eminent men and women, protesting. with earnest voice and act, against that which they say is the abolition of individual rights, the p,ra.ctical licensing of professional infamy, and the" thin end ' of a national policy fatal to purity, morality, domestic peace, and English characteristicsa policy not of pity but of c;rnicism, destined to degrade and corrupt the country submittmg to it. The promoters of the innovation J?lead State necessities, precedent, and reason against these" sentlIDental" objections. They point out that we interfere already with sources of fever and cholera, local or individual ; that we have Vaccination and other Laws which postpone the liberty and self·respect of the person to the welfare of the community; that, as to recognising thc vice, they do no more than the hospital which cures a notoriouR thief and discharges him to his old pursuits, or than the existing asylums; while they cite fi(5ures to show that, under the edicts m question, they have· diminished the extent of the evil, and therefore claim that those Acts, with their extraordinary powers, shall be gradually extended to the entire kingdom.
