My life : a record of events and opinions - Wallace-online.org

"anything ! 332 MY LIFEhe recurred to it a second time, and asked me if Ireally meant to tell them that those two diagramswere both accurate, and when I said again thatthough on different scales both represented the samefacts, he looked up at the ceiling with an air whichplainly said, "If you will say that you will sayThe Commission lingered on for six years, anddid not issue its final report till 1896, while theevidence, statistics, and diagrams occupied numerousbulky blue-books. The most valuable parts of itwere the appendices, containing the tables anddiagrams presented by the chief witnesses, togetherwith a large number of official tables and statistics,both of our own and foreign countries, affording amass of material never before brought together.This enabled me to present the general statisticalargument more completely and forcibly than I haddone before, and I devoted several months of veryhard work to doing this, and brought it out inpamphlet form in January, 1898, in order that a copymight be sent to every member of the House ofCommons before the new Vaccination Act came upfor discussion. This was done by the NationalAnti-Vaccination League, and I wrote to the halfdozenmembers I knew personally, begging them togive one evening to its careful perusal. But so faras any of their speeches showed, not one of the sixhundred and seventy members gave even thatamount of their time to obtain information on asubject involving the health, life, and personal freedomof their constituents. Yet I know that in nowork I have written have I presented so clear andso conclusive a demonstration of the fallacy of apopular belief as is given in this work, which was