(5) Thirty years of decreasing Vaccination in Leicester, and its Teachings.

(6) The Army and Navy: a Demonstration of the Uselessness of Vaccination.

(7) How to deal with Medical Pro-vaccinators.

This has been written specially to instruct voters, and to enable them to catechise their parliamentary candidates and any medical or other upholders of vaccination. I will here give the last three paragraphs of what will probably be my last word on this subject.

"Doctors and Members of Parliament are alike grossly ignorant of the true history of the effects of vaccination. They require to be taught; and nothing is so likely to teach them as to show them the diagrams I have referred to in this short exposition of the subject-those of London for thirty years before and after vaccination-of England and Wales during the period of official registration-of Leicester which has almost abolished small-pox by refusing to be vaccinated for thirty years-and for the Army and Navy-which, though thoroughly re-vaccinated and therefore (according to the doctors) as well protected as they possibly can be, yet die of small-pox at least as much as badly vaccinated Ireland, and many times more than unvaccinated Leicester.

"A doctor who has not studied these most vital statistics has no right to an opinion on this subject.

"A candidate for Parliament who will not give the necessary time and attention to study them, but is yet ready to vote for penal laws against those who know infinitely more of the question than he does, is utterly unworthy to receive a single vote from any self-respecting constituency."

CHAPTER XL

A CHAPTER ON MONEY MATTERS-EARNINGS

SPECULATIONS AND LAW-SUITS

AND LOSSES

Up to the age of twenty-one I do not think I ever had a sovereign of my own. I then received a small sum, perhaps about £50, the remnant of a legacy from my grandfather, John Greenell. This enabled me to get a fair outfit of clothes, and to keep myself till I got the appointment at the Leicester school. While living at Neath as a surveyor I did little more than earn my living, except during the six months of the railway mania, when I was able to save about £100. This enabled me to go to Para with Bates, and during the four years on the Amazon my collections just paid all expenses, but those I was bringing home with me would probably have sold for £200. My agent, Mr. Stevens, had fortunately insured them for £150, which enabled me to live a year in London, and get a good outfit and a sufficient cash balance for my Malayan journey.

My eight years in the Malay Archipelago were successful, financially, beyond my expectations. Celebes, the Moluccas, the Aru Islands, and New Guinea were, for English museums and private collections, an almost unknown territory. A large proportion of my insects and birds were either wholly new or of extreme rarity in England; and as many of them were of large size and of great beauty, they brought very high prices. My agent had invested the proceeds from time to time in Indian guaranteed railway stock, and a year after my return I found myself in possession of about £300 a year. Besides this, I still possessed the whole series of private collections, including large numbers of new or very rare

species, which, after I had made what use of them was needed for my work, produced an amount which in the same securities would have produced about £200 a year more.

But I never reached that comfortable position. Owing to my never before having had more than enough to supply my immediate wants, I was wholly ignorant of the numerous snares and pitfalls that beset the ignorant investor, and I unfortunately came under the influence of two or three men who, quite unintentionally, led me into trouble. Soon after I came home I made the acquaintance of Mr. R., who held a good appointment under Government, and had, besides, the expectation of a moderate fortune on the death of an uncle. I soon became intimate with him, and we were for some years joint investigators of spiritualistic phenomena. He was, like myself at that time, an agnostic, well educated, and of a more positive character than myself. He had for some years saved part of his income, and invested it in various foreign securities at low prices, selling out when they rose in value, and in this way he assured me he had in a few years doubled the amount he had saved. He studied price-lists and foreign news, and assured me that it was quite easy, with a little care and judgment, to increase your capital in this way. He quite laughed at the idea of allowing several thousand pounds to lie idle, as he termed it, in Indian securities, and so imbued. me with an idea of his great knowledge of the money-market, that I was persuaded to sell out some of my bonds and debentures and buy others that he recommended, which brought in a higher interest, and which he believed would soon rise considerably in value. This change went on slowly with various success for several years, till at last I had investments in various English, American, and foreign railways, whose fluctuations in value I was quite unable to comprehend, and I began to find, when too late, that almost all my changes of investment brought me loss instead of profit, and later on, when the great depression of trade of 1875-85 occurred, the loss was so great as to be almost ruin.

In 1866 one of my oldest friends became secretary to a small body of speculators, who had offices in Pall Mall, and

who, among other things, were buying slate quarry properties, and forming companies to work them. Two of these properties were in the neighbourhood of Dolgelly and Machynlleth, and a party of us went down to see them. We were shown the outcrop of the slate rock, followed it across the country, were told it was of fine quality, and that there was a fortune in it if properly developed. My friend's employer seemed to know all about it, and as many large fortunes had been made out of slate quarries, it seemed quite a safe thing. The slate was undoubtedly there, as small portions had been worked and split up, and we saw the piles of slates, and were assured that the quality would be still better as it was worked deeper. One of the veins had been found to be excellent for billiard tables, and for all kinds of slate tanks, as it could be got out in slabs of almost any size, and only wanted sawing and planing machines worked by a small mountain brook close by to become very profitable. Of course we were shown reports by specialists, who declared that the slate rock was abundant and good, and if properly developed would be profitable.

I was persuaded to take shares, and to be a director of these companies, without any knowledge of the business, or any idea how much capital would be required. The quarries were started, machinery purchased, call after call made, with the result in both cases that, after four or five years of struggle, the capital required and the working expenses were so great that the companies had to be wound up, and I was the loser of about a thousand pounds.

While this was going on a still more unfortunate influence became active. My old friend in Timor and Singapore, Mr. Frederick Geach, the mining engineer, came home from the East, and we became very intimate, and saw a good deal of each other. He was a Cornishman, and familiar with tin, lead, and copper mining all his life, and he had the most unbounded confidence in good English mines as an investment. He had shares in some of the lead-mines of Shropshire and Montgomeryshire, and we went for a walking tour in that beautiful country, visited the mines, went down the shafts by

endless perpendicular ladders, and examined the veins and workings with the manager, who had great confidence in its value, and was a large shareholder. "Here," said Geach, "you can see the vein of lead ore. It is very valuable, and extends to an unknown depth. This is not a probability, it is a certainty." And so I was persuaded to buy shares in lead-mines, and gradually had a large portion of my capital invested in them.

But here again, neither I nor Geach, nor hardly one in England, knew of the insidious foe that in a remote part of the world was preparing the way for the ruin of English leadmining. This was twofold: the great development of mining in Spain by English capitalists; and, more important still, the - enormous amount of silver-mining in Nevada, United States, where the ore contained lead and silver combined, so that as the works extended large quantities of lead accumulated as a kind of waste product, and much of this was exported to Europe, and so lowered the price of lead that most of the British lead-mines became unprofitable. About 1870 the price of lead began to fall, and has continued to fall, as has silver, ever since. The result of all this was that by 1880 a large part of the money I had earned at the risk of health and life was irrecoverably lost.

While these continued misfortunes were in progress I was involved in two other annoyances, causing anxiety and worry for years, as well as a very large money loss. The first was with a dishonest builder, who contracted to build my house at Grays, and who was paid every month according to the proportion of the work done. One day, when the house was little more than half finished, he did not appear to pay his men, and as they would not continue to work without their money I paid them. He did not appear the next week, and sent no excuse, so the architect gave him notice that I should complete the building myself, and that, according to the agreement, he would be responsible for any cost beyond the contract price. After a few weeks he appeared, and wanted to go on, but that we declined. The house cost me somewhat more than the contract price, and when it was finished I sent