THE PECULIAR PEOPLE.

Press, Volume XXX, Issue 4098, 14 September 1878, Page 2

THE PECULIAR PEOPLE.

[From the London " Standard."] We gave, yesterday, a brief account of an inquest held on a child whose parents belonged to the sect known as the Peculiar People-. Death had been caused by convulsions, following on whooping-cough, and the infant had, of course, died without medical attendance; the sect, as ia well known, holding that resort to the physician is sin, partly on scriptural grounds, and partly, we presume, on a general idea that the employment of human means of healing manifests distrust in the Divine power, or rebellion against the decree of Providence. In wresting certain isolated texts in the Old and New Testament to support an inference so palpably unreasonable, the Peculiar People are not by any means peculiar. Conclusions quite as monstrous have been derived by most Christian sects at one time or another, in one or other department of conduct or theology, from similar premises. One sect holds that all war, even in self-defence, is forbidden, not only by the general spirit of Christianity, but by such single phrases as that which bids Christians "resist not evil;" and in elder days, and perhaps even now, as regards its stricter members, the Society extends the dogma to the extreme consequences, and considers forcible resistance to a burglar or highwayman, perhaps even an appeal to the police, as equally unchristian. The prohibition of certain " marriages of affim'y," so far as it rests on Scriptural sanction, and not on domestic and social considerations, is equally based on a forced construction of single passages, perhaps of a single passage, Half the doctrines that have in different periods, and for different communions, turned Christianity into a religion of gloom and despair, have scarcely better foundation than the strange creed which from time to time brings its eccentric professors into conflict with the law ann the magistrates. Aβ regards the more general basis of their dogma, the Peculiar People are equally countenanced by those whom education should have rendered wiser and more clearsighted. It is true that excessive faith is not a favorite error of the nineteenth century. Those who entangle themselves in the insoluble mysteries of fafe and free will, scientific necessitarianism, and the efficacy of prayer, are for the most part sceptics; but negation in such matters v apt to lead quite as rapidly and surely as unreasoning, affirmation into Serbonian bogs of unsoundness and confusion. The suggestion of scientists that the efficacy of prayer should be tested by ite effect on the patients of one particular hospital—the rest of the London sick being deliberately neglected in the appeal to Providence—folly rivals any absurdity, any manifestation of sectarian ignorance or logical perversity. Its general absurdity was so evident that no special answer seemed to be required, otherwise orthodoxy might have answered with absolute

conclusiveness in the words that confoiina'etl the father of falsehood. The one extraoreli. nary achievement of faith that our generation can really boast is the maintenance of a large and most suoc<sesful orphan home by on enthusiast utterly without means of his own, who, finding himself on many an erening without food for the morrow, yet -was never compelled to see bis children fast for a single day. " ....-■ , . •■ ■'..■■:■■ . j We have said enough, perhaps too much, of those errors in which, .after all the Peculiar People scarcely exaggerate the common perversities of ecclesiastical logic. Their relation to the law is a matter of more practical interest. It is no doubt as much a parental duty to provide children with medicine and medical care proportionate to the father's mean* as to furnish them with food, clothing, and other necessaries. Nevertheless, when the neglect of orthodox remedies resulting in death is treated as an act of manslaughter, we cannot bat think that on this ground the Peculiar People are somewhat hardly and exceptionally treated. No attempt has yet been made to punish as manslaughter death resulting from the wildest of medical heresies. Had the unfortunate victim of the Plaistow inquest physicked his child from a chest of infinitesimal globules, each containing an infinitesimal quantity of some more or lees potent drug—probably far less than might be found in ordinary articles of food—no jury would have ventured to censure him, and certainly no Court would have presumed, by finding him guilty of manslaughter, to pronounce that homoeopathy is hot a legitimate form of medical practice. Yet those who have least faith in fetishism and most confidence in science may well believe that the unction applied by an Elder might do just as much and just as little good as a sugar pill containing a thousandth part of a drop of morphine or of arsenic. Q's vegetable medicines, or P's life-pills might again be administered with almost equal assurance of impunity, and yet there are few qualified doctors who would not affirm that the indiscriminate administration of such medicines is more likely to be fatal than total abstinence from all medical treatment whatsoever. If it be practically recognised that parents a right to exercise freely their own discretion as to the dootor to be called in or (he medioine to be given, it is difficult to distinguish, between one form of indiscretion and another. Doctors no doubt have a speoial prejudice against charms and fetish; but these are at least harmless, which is more than can be said for some popular quack medicines. Jurors, again, both as Christians and as mej of the world, are no doubt more strongly biassed against mistreatment based on theological follies than against that which may be founded on the most- childish secular absurdities. But in either case the prejudice seems unreasonable, and it is difficult to draw a clear logical or legal distinction between the fetish like the Chrism administered by the Peculiar People and the medical "charms" of acknowledged quackery. Arid we must also observe that another class of offenders against the law meet with much milder usuage. The offence of those who refuse to rely on any physician or any kind of secular medicine is at most an offence against the common law—that is, against roles inferred from principles more or lees vague and general, adopted and firmly established in the minds of lawyers and judges in ages much less enlightened and also much lees tolerant than the present. The illegality, the manslaughter, is matter of inference, and, as it seems: to outsiders, somewhat uncertain inference: Those parents who rebel against vaccination defy a recent statute . deliberately passed' after full consideration by Parliament—a statute, moreover, based ov a. very ample experience. Again, while tlie Peculiar People only the lives of themselves and their families, every household in which vaccination is resisted beI comes a centre of danger and infection .to an entire neighborhood. As Sir T. Watson has' observed in an article in the " Nineteenth Century," as remarkable for fairnens as for lucidity and distinctness of opinion, were vaccination and re-vaccination regular and universal there is good reason to believe that ere this small-pox would have been completely, stamped out. Yet while those the consequences of whose errors are confined to theirown families, are liable to the penalties of manslaughter, those who (preferring their own private judgment to that of the medical profession and thenation at large, as well as to positive law) make.their dwellings centres of a mortal in-. . feciicii, can at most be visited with small ie . peated'fines., The distinction seems illogical alike in a legal and > practical sense. Disobedience taen express command is certainly worse tlian disobedience to an inferred precept of law, and the stubborn self-confidence which endangers- others ie s fitter object of social repression than that perversity the consequences of which are confined to a single j family. It is true that the anti-vaccinationists .j have one. excuse, so long as the vaccine lymph is taken from human vesicles, and without any absolute security for the he&lthfulnesa of thyMdfrftflLw-liftte ttefciok: ILL «ut> P lU-! lymph taken from a Chile} &)9ft&|l|Y ttlODIlf) not Tialily iiseaee<l ;. and we fe«r tliat ttie is more thana possibility —that* in ix&any oshsee it has been a painful, and in come a fatal, fact. Nevertheless the number of such cases is infinitesimal as-compared with the number of lives saved by vaccination. The public has a right to insist on the Btrongest precautions against euehj infection; but since tHeir~cHoice. Snrolvee- "the «»fe(y of their reighbow, parents can hardly claim, in this respect at least, an absolute right of election. So long, then, as we practically tolerate persietont disobedience to the Vaccination Law. our treatment of the Peculiar People cannot but seem somewhat harsh and inconsistent.