the College shall consult with, meet, advise,
direct, or assist any person engaged in such
deceptions or practices, or in any system or
practice considered derogatory or dishonourable by
Physicians or Surgeons." Inasmuch as the
persons attacked in this decree are themselves
physicians who do not consider their practice
derogatory or dishonourable, the meaning of that
phrase " by Physicians and Surgeons" must be
"by the Council of this or that medical College."
Without setting forth in what articles of this most
illiberal and indecent denunciation we have faith,
and in what we have not faith—wholly apart from
that question of opinion— we protest against the
unlawful claim of any council whatever to impose
its creeds upon the medical profession. For the
honour and prosperity of a high intellectual
calling, second to none on earth, it is necessary
that medical men, whether it favour or oppose
their own particular opinions, should resist every
attempt to degrade their profession into servitude
to the ideas of a majority, or of a minority, or of
any body of men whatever. Let them read the
following admirable letter in which ARCHBISHOP
WHATELY replied to a physician who was
himself no homœopathist, and by whom his attention
was called to this act of the Irish College of
Surgeons:

My dear Sir,—I was well aware of the detestable
act of tyranny you refer to. I believe some persons
were overawed into taking part in it against their
own judgment. I have always protested against
such conduct in all departments of life. You may
see something to the purpose in my little penny
tract on Trades' Unions (to be had at Parker's). In
fact, the present is one of the Trades' Unions. A
man has a right to refuse to work except for such
wages or under such conditions as he himself chooses
to prescribe, but he has no right to compel others to
concur with him. If there is any mode of medical
treatment which he disapproves of, or any system of
education which he thinks objectionable, he will be
likely to keep clear of it of his own accord, without
any need of compulsion or pledges. Those, again,
who may think differently ought not to be coerced
or bullied. Some persons seem to have a notion
that there is some connexion between persecution
and religion; but the truth is, it belongs to human
nature. In all departments of life you may meet
with narrow-minded bigotry and uncharitable party-
spirit. Long before the outbreak of the Reformation,
the Nominalists and the Realists of the logical
school persecuted each other unmercifully; so have
Royalists and Republicans done in many countries;
and in our own country the Trades' Unions persecute
any one who does not submit to their regulations.
In Ireland, if any one takes a farm in contravention
of the rules of the agrarian conspirators, he is
waylaid and murdered; and if he embraces the Protestant faith,
his neighbours all conspire to have no
dealings with him. The truth is, the majority of
mankind have no real love of liberty, except that
they are glad to have it themselves, and to keep it
all to themselves; but they have neither spirit
enough to stand up firmly for their own rights, nor
sufficient sense of justice to respect the rights of
others. They will submit to the domineering of a
majority of their own party, and will join with
them in domineering over others. In the midst of
the disgust and shame which one must feel at such
proceedings as you have alluded to, it is some
consolation to the advocates of the systems denounced
to see that there is something of a testimony borne
to them by their adversaries, who dare not trust the
cause to the decision of reason and experience, but
resort to such expedients as might as easily be
employed for a bad cause as a good one.

R. DUBLIN.

There is no simpler or more ancient source of
trouble and wrong than the formula,—Thus I
think, I know I am right, and it is therefore for
the benefit of the world that my opinion should
be imposed on others.

Let us urge, then, upon all medical men, not
in the interests of this or that body of
exceptional thinkers, but in the interests of their own
noble and liberal profession, to hold in utter
scorn this wretched old delusion of the argument
by pains and penalties; to make it clear to the
world that within their bounds at least there is
liberty of thought, there are men left free to grope
for truth as their own instincts lead them in
very various directions. Any medical man, as
Dr. Whately points out, is personally free to
choose as he will the men in concert with whom
he feels that he can act most usefully, and may
refuse to meet a homœopathist in consultation.
In so doing he goes his own way; but he has no
right to impose that way with pains and penalties,
direct or indirect, upon his brethren.

It is not for the true scholar in medicine to
adopt the tone of Foote's apothecary, who, when
Sir Jacob Jollup observes, "We are a little
better instructed, Master Lint. Formerly,
indeed, a fit of illness was very expensive; but
now physic is cheaper than food," cries, "Marry,
Heaven forbid!"  "Why," says Sir Jacob, "a
fever that would formerly have cost you a
fortune, you may now cure for twelvepenn'orth of
powder." " Or kill, Sir Jacob," cries the apothecary.
"I am sorry to find a man of your
worship's——Sir Jacob, a promoter of puffs, an
encourager of quacks, Sir Jacob." " Regulars, Lint,
regulars; look at their names— not a soul of
them but is either P.L. or M.D." On which
Lint's comment is of the " derogatory and
dishonourable" school—" Plaguy liars! Murderous
dogs!" Truth and right never come to their
own so quickly and so surely as when they leave
error to run an honest race with them and prove
her weakness. Nothing is got, let them be ten
times truth and right that falsely and wrongfully
hope to thrive the quicker for assassination, by
attempts to strangle at the starting-post or on
the course, even the meanest of competitors. Let
not another Dr. Garth have to sing of his Faculty
"how ancient leagues to modern discord fell,"
and cry again to the goddess of health,

     With just resentments and contempt you see
     The foul dissensions of the Faculty;
     How your sad, sick'ning art now hangs her head.
     And once a science is become a trade.

For surely nothing higher than a dull, short-
sighted spirit of trade could prompt an ordinance