itch) ScalanSs.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES,

REPORT OF COMMITTEE ON VACCINATION.

Your Committee appointed the 21st June, 1854, to consider " the best means of introducing the most complete system of vaccination amongst the Natives," having taken evidence thereon and matuiely considered the same, have agreed to the following report. They think that no time ought to be lost in protecting the Aborigines of the Colony as widely and extensively as possible, from the dangers of small pox by means of vaccination. With regard to tbe efficacy of vaccination as a protective agent, your Committee do not deem it necessary to adduce evidence. They will merely state what is admitted by the best IVledical authorities to be a fact ■ that amongst Europeans before the practice of inoculation, the deaths from the disease were in the ratio of one half of those attacked. After the practice of inoculation had been introduced, the proportion of deaths was not more than one in five hundred, and since vaccination has become general in Europe the disease of small pox, one of the most loathsome and fatal scourges of the human species has been robbed of nearly all its terrors. All concurrent testimony goes to prove, that in the colored races of men, small pox is more virulent and fatal than in the fair skinned races, while among sa\a— ges, their personal habits, mode of life, and ignorance of treatment combine to disseminate the disease with frightful rapidity, and to give to it a most malignant and exterminating character. The disappearance of the Aboriginal inhabitants of the North American continent, is mainly to be ascribed to the ravages of small pox. It is on record (vide Catlin's North Americas Indians,) that out of a tribe of 2,000 attacked by small pox, in the year 1837, in a few months only 35 survived. Your Committee cannot doubt, that results somewhat similar would follow upon its introduction into these islands ; and that a most interesting race of men just emerging from barbarism, would, under the breath of this fatal disease, be added to the long list of coloured races, who have disappeared before the advancing footstep of the colonist. Thev have in evidence from good authority, that not more than one tenth of the native inhabitants of the Northern Island, comprising nearly the whole of the native population have received the protection of vaccination. Ihey deem it a paramount duty on the part of the European colonists of the country, to extend to the maori people, that protection which they have themselves received, and owe to their superior civilization. And they may be allowed, perhaps, to add, that