In further consideration of the meaning and significance of this
important decision of the U. S. Supreme Court it may be now explained
that the law of Massachusetts here considered was a Statute passed by
the Legislature requiring the vaccination of all persons, child or
adult, under penalty of fine of $5 for refusing vaccination. This law
made an exception for children or minors in delicate health or such
physical condition as would be injured by vaccination, but made no such
exception for adults like the defendant Jacobson.
The Supreme Court of the State of Massachusetts in its decision, from
which this appeal was taken, had already decided, as I have shown,
that the State could not enforce actual compulsory vaccination upon any
person, but could only enforce the fine of $5 if vaccination was not
voluntarily adopted.
The U. S. Supreme Court concluded its decision in these words:
“We now decide only that the statute covers the present case,
and that nothing clearly appears that would justify this Court
in holding it to be unconstitutional and inoperative in its
application to the plaintiff in error.”
From this conclusion Justices Brewer and Peckham dissented, thus
evidently holding that the law of Massachusetts, which inflicts a
fine of $5 for refusing vaccination, was unconstitutional, whereas
the majority of the Court seem to hold that this State law, which can
enforce the fine but cannot compel the vaccination, was legal and
constitutional, but that nevertheless this fine could not be enforced
against any persons who could show that vaccination was dangerous to
their health and life, and that the Courts would interfere to prevent
its enforcement in all such cases and thus protect the constitutional
rights of the individual within that “sphere” of preëminent individual
right as already quoted.
Now it seems that the defendant Jacobson did not properly plead that
vaccination was dangerous to health and life, in his own case, or offer
to prove this, in his own case, and hence the decision was technically
given against him, but really, in principle, for him; which decision,
as we have shown, was rendered by a divided Court with two judges
dissenting who evidently held that compulsory vaccination by fine, as
called for in the law of Massachusetts, was unconstitutional.
We therefore believe that this decision, when properly applied, will
invalidate all forms of coercive vaccination, whether by inflicted
fine, or by denial of some civic right, such as public education,
whenever the prosecuted case is properly tried on the correct legal
pleas and issues and carried up through our highest Courts on the
principles laid down in this great decision and outlined in this
analysis.
UNALIENABLE RIGHTS OF THE INDIVIDUAL _VERSUS_ RIGHTS OF MAJORITIES.
FALSE IDEA OF THE SUPREMACY OF MAJORITIES SCORED
We often hear it stated that this is a government essentially of
majorities and that any majority can legally and properly force its
opinion or will upon any minority, no matter how objectionable to the
minority this law or will of the majority might be; and that it is the
clear right of the majority thus to oppress itself upon the minority
and the loyal duty of the minority to yield to this oppression, however
odious.
This rank idea of the supremacy of majorities is, I believe, a great
legal and moral and cowardly mistake and a gross misconception of
our Democratic American Government, because it entirely loses sight
of the great basic principle of _inherent_ and _unalienable human
rights_ which seems to have been first, or best, expressed in our
immortal Declaration of Rights. Therefore, under this basic principle
of “unalienable” right, no majorities, however powerful, can legally
or morally invade or set aside any of the “unalienable” or inseparable
rights of the People, as this is obviously the clear significance and
meaning of the terms “unalienable rights,” as I have already shown.
Hence this fundamental American principle of “unalienable rights” calls
in trumpet tones from the lines of the Declaration and Constitution and
gives this warning to all majorities, however powerful: “Thus far shalt
thou go but no farther, and here must thy power be stayed”--that is,
stayed at the approach to every sacred inherent and unalienable right
of the individual necessary to the life, liberty, health and happiness
of the individual.
We have often heard the phrase quoted, “This is a government of laws
and not of men,” which is only another way of stating what I am here
contending for, viz., that this Government of Americanism is not based
essentially on mere numbers or majorities of “men,” but chiefly on
naturally or divinely ordained _principles_ or “laws” of eternal human
right and justice, and, more particularly and essentially, on the great
basic American law or principle of “Unalienable Rights” of the People,
which is the great American “Sanctuary” of Liberty and Right that no
majority or minority can invade or profane.
Majorities can, of course, properly prevail over minorities in
all matters that are purely selective or elective or which can be
determined only by preponderating vote, but cannot prevail over any
defined or established inherent, unalienable or constitutional right of
the individual, and it has often been well said that Constitutions are
made especially to protect minorities, and not majorities, who already
have the preponderant political and legislative power in their hands
and do not need such protection.
MEDICAL FREEDOM AND ALIMENTARY FREEDOM ARE EQUALLY UNALIENABLE RIGHTS
OF THE PEOPLE AND NECESSARY FOR HUMAN LIFE, LIBERTY AND HAPPINESS
We have already seen how compulsory medicine is a gross violation of
the American principle of Unalienable Rights and need say nothing
further on that point here; but, as the exposure and condemnation of
one evil may show us the way to suppress another and similar evil,
so it may be excusable for us to digress here for a moment from our
main subject and call attention to the fact that the same moral, legal
and logical principles against Compulsory Medicine apply equally
to that latest dangerous invasion of the unalienable rights of the
people involved in the extraordinary scheme of National Prohibition or
Compulsory Abstinence in certain foods and drinks recently forced upon
the people by what is alleged to be a majority of the voters of this
country. Now, I do not believe that any majority of our voters have
ever approved either compulsory medicine or compulsory abstinence, but,
on the contrary, that these errors have been forced upon the people by
audacious, well organized and arrogant minorities who have temporarily
gotten control of political and legislative power and have deceived the
public mind with the alleged necessity, utility and righteousness of
these oppressive errors. But even if it can be shown that a majority
of our voters approve either of these errors, such alleged majorities
would be morally and legally unjustified in overriding any inherent
right of the people under our basic American doctrine and law of
Unalienable Rights.
I intend to treat, in a separate article, this important subject of
Alimentary Freedom, in certain fermented foods and drinks, as an
unalienable right of the people, established by world-wide and age-long
usage and by the highest civic, moral, legal and religious sanctions,
and need give no further attention to that special subject here.[3]
MEDICAL DESPOTISM WORSE THAN RELIGIOUS DESPOTISM. THE OLD RELIGIOUS
HERESY, “LET US SIN THAT GRACE MAY ABOUND,” COMPARED WITH THE MODERN
VACCINATION FANATICISM, “LET US FORCE AND SPREAD DISEASE UPON THE
PEOPLE SO THAT HEALTH MAY ABOUND!”
In the past centuries, before our great American Institutions of
Civil and Religious Liberty were established, it was the Doctors of
Divinity who were wholly responsible for inventing and maintaining that
great evil of Compulsory Religion, where one type of religion or one
conception of Deity was forced on the whole population under penalty of
torture, disfigurement, mutilation, or death; and these misguided men
seem to have actually had the absurd and diabolical idea--incredible to
us to-day--that by this mutilation and murder they could increase the
sum total of morality in the whole community!
In a similar way, our modern doctors of medicine and our medical
societies are wholly responsible for inventing and enforcing the
horrible medical scheme of compulsory disease, and with a similar logic
that, by thus forcing these vaccine operations and diseases on the
whole population, they can greatly increase the sum total of health in
the whole community!
This dogma of compulsory disease is, of course, just as false and evil
as the dogma of compulsory religion; but, of the two evils, compulsory
disease is far more dangerous to human right and safety, health and
life, and it would probably not be difficult to prove that where
one person was mutilated or murdered by compulsory religion in the
barbarous past, ten are now injured or killed by the modern medical
barbarism of compulsory disease.
There was an old sect of heretics about the time of the Reformation
which seemed to have a poor idea of the value of personal virtue and
good works in salvation as compared with mere dogma, “grace,” and
“faith,” and whose motto seemed to be: “The more sin, the more grace,”
or “Let us sin that grace may abound.” Now, this seems to be very
similar to the doctrine of the coercive vaccinators of to-day, which
appears to be simply and literally this: “The more disease we inflict,
the more health we create,” or “Let us inflict and spread disease
widely upon the people so that health may correspondingly abound.”
A striking example of the evil effects of this dangerous vaccine
doctrine in recent times is found in the case of Japan, whose awful
record in vaccination and smallpox and in epidemic disease transmitted
by vaccine virus is exposed in the next paragraphs.
AWFUL RECORD OF JAPAN IN VACCINATION AND SMALLPOX AND IN EPIDEMIC
DISEASE CAUSED BY VACCINE VIRUS, AS GIVEN IN U. S. GOVERNMENT REPORTS
Japan has been perhaps the most extensively vaccinated country in
recent times, with most rigid compulsory laws, copied from Germany,
which require re-vaccination at different periods of infant and adult
life. Now vaccination, as I have already shown, is simply one of
the varied forms of smallpox, being an artificially propagated or
cultivated form of the disease involving human smallpox and cowpox
combined, and is often more dangerous and deadly than the natural
disease. This being the fact, what therefore should we expect to
result from the dangerous practice of impregnating the blood of a
whole population with repeated inoculations of the virus of human
smallpox and cow disease? Should we logically expect anything else but
that epidemics of smallpox and cow disease should break out in due
time in such a generally vaccinated and infected population, and that
vaccine or cow disease should be extended to other populations wherever
the virus made from human and cow diseases should be carried and used?
This logical expectation is what seems to have actually happened in the
case of much-vaccinated Japan, and instead of being made immune from
smallpox epidemics by general vaccination and re-vaccination--which is
one of the positive claims made by vaccinators--Japan, on the contrary,
seems to have suffered from the worst epidemics of smallpox known in
modern times, not only worse than in poorly vaccinated countries like
England and the United States, but worse than experienced in old times
before the days of vaccination!
This conclusion seems to be fully proved from the U. S. Public Health
Reports for September 2, 1910, which give this frightful record of
smallpox epidemics in Japan for several years past. The population of
Japan at that time, 1910, was about 48 millions, and the high waves
in the epidemics in the preceding ten years were as follows: In 1898
there were 149,012 smallpox cases with 40,971 deaths, mortality 27½ per
cent.; in 1905 there were 10,704 cases with 3,388 deaths, mortality
31½ per cent., and in 1908 there were 18,075 cases with 5,835 deaths,
mortality 32½ per cent.
These figures, considering the vaccinal conditions existing in Japan,
under most rigid compulsory laws, are surely terribly significant, to
say the least, and fully shatter the fallacious vaccine doctrine that
vaccination is the only effective remedy against smallpox and that
it always lowers the mortality in epidemics! Per contra, here we see
from these official U. S. Health Reports that in this much-vaccinated
population there was not only a series of severe epidemics with a very
high mortality, but a constantly ascending mortality from 27½ per cent.
in 1898 to 31½ per cent. in 1905 and 32½ per cent. in 1908! Whereas
the usual mortality given by good authorities in old times before
the days of vaccination was only 15 to 20 per cent.! See “History of
Smallpox” by Dr. James Moore, Jenner’s chief assistant, London, 1815,
page 243.
Now I believe that there is no country in modern times, whether
vaccinated or unvaccinated, which has shown worse epidemics of smallpox
than much-vaccinated Japan, as above shown from official data, whereas
the epidemics within the same period in the poorly vaccinated countries
of England and the United States have been small in comparison.
Surely, therefore, our “Yankees of the Orient” seem to have copied
some of our antique medical barbarisms even more fully than they have
copied our real modern improvements. And, surely, poorly vaccinated
England is much better off with less vaccination and more sanitation
when its Minister of Health, Hon. John Burns, can publicly declare in
Parliament on April 12, 1911, that, “Just in proportion as, in recent
years, exemptions from vaccination have gone up from 4 per cent. to 30
per cent., so deaths from smallpox have declined.” This also is the
experience of Leicester, the sanitary English city, unvaccinated for
the past 30 years, as previously shown at page 22; and such, I believe,
will be the result wherever that irrational system of inflicting
disease to produce health is abandoned and the rational system of
sanitation and hygiene is adopted in its place.