THE CURE 
 
 OF THE 
 
 GREAT SOCIAL EVIL, 
 
 WITH 
 
 SPECIAL KEFERENCE TO EECENT LAWS 
 DELUSIVELY CALLED 
 
 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES' ACTS, 
 
 BY 
 
 W. 
 
 Emeritus Professor of University College, London. 
 
 LONDON: 
 TRUBNER <fe CO., 60 PATERNOSTER ROW. 
 
 BRISTOL: 
 ARROWSMITH, 11 QUAY STREET. 
 
 1869. 
 PRICE ONE SHILLING.
 
 [ LIBRAR 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 CAUFOR -
 
 THE CURE 
 
 OF 
 
 THE GREAT SOCIAL EVIL. 
 
 PABT I. THE MATERIALIST TREATMENT. 
 
 UNDER the name of the Great Social Evil oiir newspapers have 1 
 for years alluded to an awful vice^ too evidently of wide pre- 
 valence. Private effort is powerless to prevent : it can but, too 
 late, rescue a few frail victims. Charitable persons, though 
 well aware how much better it is to tear up roots of evil than to 
 lop twigs, yet have no other form of action, but to slave at a 
 task which is comparable to mopping out the ocean. 
 
 But at length the State itself has been forced out of its 
 apathy ; the State, which can not only punish those primarily 
 guilty, but act through institutions upon men's habits, morals 
 and circumstances. Being largely able to prevent, and being 
 itself vitally dependent on the public morality, it is bound to 
 prevent ; and is still more solemnly bound not to facilitate, to 
 occasion, to sanction vice, or intensify depravity. Dr. GOITRLEY, 
 a veteran physician, long acquainted with the army, was 
 peculiarly shocked at the "rottenness" (such is the word) of 
 our most splendid regiments in the Crimean war; and for a 
 series of years made energetic representations concerning the 
 unsound health of English soldiers. Sir ALEXANDER TULLOCH 
 and other distinguished persons entirely agreed in Dr. GOURLEY'S 
 judgment, which declared the evil to have removable causes. In 
 a paper read at Bradford to the Social Science Association 
 Dr. GOURLEY recited the leading facts. 1. The soldier is
 
 entrapped into the army "by making him drunk : 2. he is kept 
 in artificial idleness, as a pampered male animal, in wretched 
 ennui for 8 hours a day : 3. he has the drinkshop near to him. 
 Dr. GOUBXEY was too tender to add, what is now loudly asserted, 
 that superior military authorities regard it as a natural right of 
 the soldiers to have loose women hanging about the barracks or 
 camp. Be this as it may, Parliament in 1866 took the matter 
 up with silent unanimity, and passed a vigorous Act, entitled, 
 The Contagious Diseases' Act. Diseases, in the plural ! Who 
 could guess that this meant, one shameful disease ? The public, 
 bolh then and later, supposed it to refer to the Cattle Murrain. 
 
 And of what sort was the Act ? It had not a scrap of 
 prevention in it. It did not remove one of the incentives to vice, 
 nor one of the facilities. It dealt with effects, not causes. It 
 did not regard the vice as an evil, but only the disease en- 
 gendered by it. It is evidently based upon the axiom, enunciated 
 deliberately by an eminent Colonial Governor, "Prostitution is 
 a public necessity ; " which is practically interpreted, that the 
 trade is a fixed quantity, against which it is vain to struggle : 
 that, on the contrary, we must acquiesce in it, accept it as an 
 English institution, and try to make it as safe to health and as 
 decorous as may be. 
 
 This is the main point, upon which England will be called to 
 judge. I am unwilling too much to fill my pages with details : 
 for others are sure now to dwell on these abundantly, and if 
 even the worst injustices be removable and were removed, the 
 deadly principle would remain. Elated by easy Parliamentary 
 success in 1866, a Society was formed to promote the Extension 
 of this Act. An amended Act, which added new towns to its 
 reach, and multiplied by nine the area attached to each town, 
 passed through Parliament last session in its last moments, and 
 became law, in spite of the protest of philanthropists to the 
 Government and in the total silence (as is alleged) of the news- 
 papers. There is great danger, lest by such stealthy extensions, 
 they gradually get into their grasp the women of the whole 
 country. The evidence printed in the blue book clearly shows, 
 that the police can totally dispense with the magistrate and do 
 actually terrify chaste women into signing their names. The 
 public, on seeing the title of the Act, could not guess at its 
 nature. Now that the secret has been revealed, (though very 
 few public prints seem willing to aid in informing the nation
 
 of the facts,) amazement and indignation are stirring up 
 many bosoms. Ladies, young and old, are filled with horror 
 at the outrages offered to their sex, and lay aside reticence. I 
 have not heard the name of a woman who is not intense in 
 aversion. A second Society has arisen to oppose the intended 
 Bill. Disgusting and ghastly as is the subject, noble hearted 
 ladies are coming to the conviction, that the inevitable debate of 
 it over the breadth of the land is a painful but salutary medicine. 
 If, through the conspiracy of the press to suppress information, 
 the party of resistance be crippled ; if, in consequence, the Bill 
 become law ; it is safe to predict, that it will be to the classes 
 now ruling a most funereal victory. All that part of the nation 
 which has faith in family sanctities, in constitutional law and in 
 sacred personal rights, as paramount over all materialistic 
 arguments, will be thrown, as never yet in England, into the 
 scale of democracy. It will be said truly : " No plebeian 
 Parliament would ever have passed so disgraceful a law." 
 
 The Act of 1866 introduced a new, an unheard of punishment. 
 A harlot had never before lost rights over her own person. To 
 violate her was as criminal as to violate a chaste woman. But 
 now, if the chief policeman swear that he "has good cause* to 
 believe" that a woman is a harlot, the law forthwith commands 
 that the woman's person shall be forcibly violated by a way of 
 its own. We thought that torture was disused as a punish- 
 ment : here is torture of mind, and for aught we can tell, of 
 body, imposed by summary conviction, which may rest on secret 
 irresponsible whispers. But in the opinion of its defenders, it 
 would seem that the Act has only introduced a new crime, Clan- 
 destine Prostitution. If a woman will but write on her brow 
 the horrid word Prostitute, if she will not try to hide her shame, 
 if she will enrol herself in the forlorn hope ; they interpret her 
 to be an honest creature, who is not ashamed of her trade, is 
 
 * In Section 40, it is enacted that if any one exhibits a document " pur- 
 porting to be signed by a Justice or by any Perton in her Majesty's service 
 
 or in that of the Admiralty, IN ANY PROCEEDING TJNDER THIS ACT, it shall 
 on production be received in Evidence, and shall be presumed to be duly 
 signed, UNTIL THE CONTRARY is SHOWN." If I understand this, the Justice, 
 without seeing or hearing the woman, may give to the Chief Policeman a 
 heap of papers ready signed, to use at his discretion : and the woman is not 
 permitted to plead, that they are not duly signed. I desire rather to distrust 
 ray interpretation, than to believe any thing so atrocious. 
 
 B
 
 not troubled with modesty, and of course can have no objection 
 to being "examined" by male surgeons 26 times a year: to 
 call that a punishment, or a torture, they regard to be simply 
 absurd. Yet the examination is (what one may well blush to 
 write) a compulsory instrumental introspection of her person. 
 It merely aims to ascertain, whether she may possibly impart 
 contagion to a soldier. If not, then she is instantly free to 
 receive contagion from him. If, on the contrary, she is judged 
 to be unclean, she is carried into hospital, and cleansed first. 
 Dismissed then anew on her mission, she is bound to come for 
 re- examination in a fortnight. Such is the clever and delicious 
 routine, which Justices of the Peace and honourable Surgeons 
 are reputed to conduct. Last year, we are told, there were 
 18,000 examinations : how many there will be, and with what 
 speed the wheels of the machine must turn, if the whole king- 
 dom be overspread by it, no mind can conjecture, nor how vast 
 will be the expense. A single Hospital in Devonport has cost 
 recently above 20,000 ; and new Hospitals for this one shame- 
 ful disease wilt have to overspread the land. What a proclama- 
 tion to the world that we are become a Sodom and Gomorrha ! 
 
 But if a woman whom the chief of the police tells the Justice 
 he "has good cause to believe" is a Prostitute, refuse to submit, 
 or to reappear statedly, she is liable to prison with hard labour, 
 first for a month, then for three months, and so on for her 
 whole life, if she be obstinate. The accusation against her is 
 comparable to that of the Spanish inquisition. She has no 
 jury, no counsel ; she cannot cross-examine the chief of the 
 police and force him to tell what is his " good cause;" and on 
 what knowledge, or whose tattle, it rests. It is acknowledged 
 by the defenders of the Act, that most regrettable injustices 
 have been inflicted under it on wholly chaste women. But that 
 to which they are blind, is, the cruelty, nay, the unpardonable 
 iniquity, of driving women into a shamelessness which they are 
 themselves trying to avoid. The law insists, that if a girl who 
 has been wickedly seduced is driven by starvation and misery 
 to sell her person, she shall not hide her shame, she shall not 
 cherish any remains of modesty, she shall not nourish the hope 
 of getting back into honourable ranks ; but she shall professedly 
 enlist in a trade which she abhors, thing and name ; she shall 
 abandon all power to blush, and cheerfully lay herself out, as 
 often as required, like a carcass for dissection. " Oh!" cry the
 
 supporters of the Act, " she soon becomes accustomed to it." 
 Accustomed ! But if you once accustom her to it, do you expect 
 her ever to recover modesty? And if the law deliberately 
 deprave her, a thing which nothing can justify, will this tend 
 to make soldiers or society at large, more moral ? or, (if we 
 must meet Materialists on their own ground, and think nothing 
 of sin and vice, much of physical discomfort,) can it possibly do 
 anything but extend disease ? 
 
 The violent punishment here enacted on disobedient women 
 proves that the framers of the Act well knew how intensely the 
 women abhor the process, how truly it is a mental torture. 
 Altogether, both the violent unconstitutional proceeding, and 
 the blind disregard of the universal corruption which such pro- 
 ceedings must cause, show, that the object was, to get at any 
 cost the completest possible register of loose women and the 
 most frequent possible examination. Paris gave the pattern to 
 which it aspires. The narrative of what goes on in Paris is 
 truly repulsive. Dr. ACTON* states that about a hundred and fifty 
 women pass through the hands of the medical man [men ?] in two 
 hours ! The women are brought in vans to a central point ; 
 and of course all the little boys ask what it is for. The women 
 become so very abandoned (says Dr. ACTON), that a guard of 
 soldiers is always at hand, to preserve order. I do not pretend 
 myself to know hideous details ; but some one has sent to me 
 the Medical Times and Gazette of September 25th last, where, 
 (among other things spoken more plainly than is pleasant to 
 repeat,) their Surgical Correspondent from Paris declares that 
 the police cannot suppress " the worst class" of women, namely, 
 the " clandestine" traders, whose "clients come from the wealthier 
 portion of the community;" and from these proceed "by far 
 the largest amount of disease." The physical scourge, says he, 
 is increasing in Paris : the " examinations" of the " public girls" 
 do not answer their end. Inspections, he adds, ought to be 
 made " twice a week, and rigorously, instead of once in two 
 weeks, which is merely alsurd." Lists cannot be made complete ; 
 not only because the women who have richer customers get 
 beyond the reach of the spies, but also because "it is hard to 
 say where libertinism ceases and prostitution begins." Such 
 is the necessary result of brute materialism. Such is the en- 
 couragement which Paris gives to her imitators. 
 
 * I quote from Mr. THOMAS WORTH, Surgeon, of Nottingham.
 
 As regards the depravity which the Parisian system causes 
 in the women, the London Rescue Society gives the following 
 terrible testimony : 
 
 " The English fallen women who frequent the Hayniarket and other 
 similar resorts, speak with the utmost abhorrence of the bestiality of tha 
 foreign women perambulating the same neighbourhoods. The Committee 
 have known moro than one instance where the loathing produced by the 
 habits of the women has led English girls to a desire to escape the abomina- 
 tions incident to a continuance in a career of sin." 
 
 It is not amiss to add, that a private International Society 
 of ladies is rising on the Continent, to put down the heart- 
 breaking and disgusting enormities of the system, which amiable 
 materialists are straining every nerve to impose upon England. 
 
 At the recent Congress of Social Science in Bristol, a gentle- 
 man who may speak with some authority, made, in defence of 
 the Act and Bill, a remarkable and very painful statement, 
 which has been printed. He is the medical officer of Health 
 for the place : and he said, that in all Clifton almost every 
 youth became infected with a shameful disease before puberty. 
 Most of us will cry out, that this is incredible ; that the specialist 
 is sure to find his favourite disease everywhere, and that his state- 
 ment is a virtual slander. Yet, after making all allowance for 
 possible bias, it would seem that the case must at least be very- 
 bad, if a sincere and clever official inquirer can possibly commit 
 himself to so awful and offensive a declaration. What then 
 follows ? Clifton is not likely to be worse than other places. 
 It contains numbers of wealthy families, with much zeal for 
 religion in various forms. If this is a specimen of England, 
 what else is she, in the upper ranks at least, but a whited 
 sepulchre ? It becomes us to give up self-righteous airs ; to 
 remember that in Catholic Ireland the women cannot be bought, 
 and that even in Mohammedan Turkey there is no class of 
 harlots, although (forsooth!) in England we are told that they 
 are a necessary of life. It is thus made out, that of the two 
 influences which alone keep men chaste, viz., 1. moral principle, 
 2. fear of disease, the former has almost wholly vanished from 
 a great mass of our richer classes. Undeniably therefore, if any 
 Law of this nature effect, or rather seem to effect, its object, 
 that of enabling vice to indulge itself with impunity, the vice 
 will bo greatly extended. If then we are a quarter as bad as 
 we are told, it is QUITE CERTAIN that the law must fail of its
 
 9 
 
 object. For if any truth of physiology is sure, it is sure that no 
 medical art can counteract the natural punishments of vice. 
 When men by the thousand are set loose, with confidence of 
 impunity, they will spread contamination more widely than ever, 
 polluting also the whole moral atmosphere. Family life, already 
 much shaken in the fashionable world, will be deeply under- 
 mined. Ancient Greece, imperial Rome, modern Paris, all warn 
 us into what abyss England will plunge. Art will assuredly 
 pander to lust, not only by advertising impunity to vice, but by 
 overthrowing Lord CAMPBELL'S Act, and in ways on which I 
 am reluctant to write without necessity. The decree will have 
 issued against us, " Let the unclean become more unclean still." 
 Indeed another foul principle in this Act cannot fail to mul- 
 tiply shameless and cruel horrors. It pretends, not to repeal 
 the penalties against brothel-keepers ; but it has practically 
 abolished them wherever the Act is applied. Yes ! the brothel- 
 keeper, the avaricious accomplice of the rich seducer, is already 
 brought into official relations with the authorities, and is avowed 
 to be "a valuable source of information." We need not press, 
 how easily a spiteful whisper from her against a girl who has 
 scornfully refused her seductions may be caught up by a zealous 
 spy, and reported to the chief policeman as "valuable." The 
 advocates of the Act have been made aware of such con- 
 tingencies, and will now try to improve in detail its worst 
 aspects towards wholly chaste women. But if the brothels be 
 honestly suppressed, how can the soldiers be served ? No such 
 attempt has been made, or will be made, while the law stands. 
 The execrable trade, in comparison with which mere harlotry is 
 virtue, is now on pleasant relations with official persons, and 
 receives their compliments for improved cleanliness and decorum. 
 One solemn duty is laid upon the brothel-keepers to inform 
 against unsound harlots. If this most hateful of all trades obtain 
 impunity, no other trade in vice can long be punishable. Thus, while 
 the nation was profoundly ignorant, and Parliament (we must 
 charitably believe) so overworked as to be practically in torpor, 
 military men and medical specialists have introduced a deadly 
 and revolutionary principle, fatal to national morality. Our 
 specialists are now offended if one call this legislation insidious ; 
 although its promoters have distinctly avowed the necessity of 
 great caution, lest the religious and moral part of the nation 
 become aware of its details. But we have nothing to do with
 
 10 
 
 persons, only with facts and with principles ; and where vital 
 interests are at stake, to naince words would be folly and 
 cowardice. 
 
 Regard for the health of the army is the plea which introduced 
 on the statute-book the Acts of 1864-6-9. Astonishing indeed 
 has been the course of legislation concerning soldiers. Parlia- 
 ment deliberately winks at men being entrapped into drinkshops, 
 and while drunk, cajoled to enlist. Thenceforward the kidnapped 
 men forfeit every vestige of English liberty ; have no appeal to 
 a civil court, are liable to insult and cruelty, and if they 
 complain, find their tyrant to be their judge. Down to the 
 miserable minutiee of beard, hair, cravat and tight trowsers, they 
 are stript of controul over their bodies and their dress. Only a 
 few years back, young soldiers fell down in suffocation and died, 
 in marching from Windsor, because their cravats were too tight. 
 They are kept in constrained idleness, and are turned into toys 
 and puppets, or into pawns on a chess-board. Drinkshops are 
 brought close to them. Many stupify by drink their grief at 
 leaving home and parents. Ennui eats them up. On some 
 occasions, allowances of rum are served out to them. Few of 
 them are allowed to marry. Harlots are regarded by many 
 commanding officers as the natural and necessary complement to 
 the camp and barrack. A few years ago it was attested, that 
 the nuptial privacy of married soldiers was the common dormi- 
 tory ! The soldiers in the Regent's Park barrack sickened and 
 died of foul air, because they did not dare to complain to the 
 colonel. When, with such a mass of tyranny, crushing men's 
 souls and bodies, it is discovered that the soldiers are "invalided " 
 by vice, and cannot go through their drill ; then at last the 
 collective wisdom of parliament, credulous to statistics and 
 specialists, incredulous to moral principle, instead of putting 
 away drink and idleness and harlotry and slavery, nails these 
 down upon the unhappy slaves, and only thinks how, by medical 
 cleverness, at the cost of all which remains of female modesty, 
 throwing overboard the most sacred principles of English law, 
 only thinks how soldiers may be enabled to practise, under the 
 influence of drink, vice worse than brutal, without being in- 
 capacitated for parade or battle. 
 
 There is at the same time a peculiarity in the system, while 
 it is purely Military, which vanishes when it is applied to Civil 
 life. So intense is the army-despotism, such a prostrate slave is
 
 11 
 
 the soldier, that his commanding officer can, by his own mere 
 will, bid the man to strip himself naked, and exhibit every thing 
 naturally secret: not for any offence which the soldier has 
 committed, but barely because it is safest to do so, before letting 
 him " go freely about." (What that means, we know.) This 
 military power has been used. At least this is a little, a partial 
 protection to the women, and may be said to make things fair 
 between the sexes. The soldiers are subjected as well as the 
 women, to periodical examinations, though not impartially : for, 
 first class petty officers, and all above them, are exempted, as 
 if contagion did homage to rank and station! Moreover it is 
 attested by a high military officer, that in some regiments even 
 the common soldiers have been set free from it, because it hurt 
 their feelings, and disgusted the surgeon! Of the women's 
 feelings no account is taken ; and the surgeon, it seems, has no 
 disgust from operating on them. However, the great mass of the 
 men in the ranks, here and on foreign stations, are periodically 
 examined. But male civilians are not under such despotism; 
 and the Act is quite silent about them. This may not be marvel- 
 lous, yet it is infamous. No epithet of scorn and hatred can be 
 too strong for this dastardly favouritism of the male sex. Who 
 are the original seducers of women ? Men. Who cause disease 
 in women, though you heal them fifty times ? Men. Now to a 
 man the examination is only disagreeable and humiliating ; it is 
 not depraving. No surgical operation is required. To him 
 there is no danger (which to the unhappy woman is great) of 
 contagion from an unclean instrument, nor of cruel disease from 
 the repetition of a hideously unnatural process. As a cumulus 
 of iniquity, while it is universally agreed that the dreaded 
 mischief is unmistakable in a man, first-rate medical authorities 
 assert that in the case of women the most skilful and laborious 
 surgeon may be wholly deceived, may condemn the healthy, 
 and fail to detect the unhealthy. What chance then has the 
 surgeon, if women are shovelled-in upon him at the rate of one 
 per minute ? And what armies of surgeons will suffice, what 
 array of huge hospitals, if this system is to overspread the whole 
 United Kingdom ? But in fact, if the principles of the Act are 
 to be accepted ; if spies, tattling, and affidavits of what one who 
 has listened to spies and tattle thinks he has " good cause to 
 believe," justify summary conviction and violating of personal 
 secrecies ; there is obviously a much speedier and surer way to
 
 12 
 
 " stamp out the murrain." Set the spies on men; take evidence 
 from the harlots themselves, (and from the brothel-keeper too, if 
 you will obstinately tolerate her) against men. Harlots would 
 quickly point out grey-haired fathers of families, surgeons, or, 
 now and then, a clergyman, who frequent brothels and seek their 
 company. If a soldier's evidence is accepted as to the woman 
 who contaminated him when he was tipsy, why not take the 
 woman's evidence as to the rich man who previously afflicted 
 her ? The only reply that can be given is, that legislators are 
 tender over their own sex, and especially over very respectable 
 people. Nay, we must add, we should need female magistrates, 
 to hinder so just a law from being a dead letter. 
 
 There are times and places when Despotism is beneficial and 
 necessary. Compulsion is sometimes eminently right ; at other 
 times infamously wrong. In the face of a public enemy, or in 
 warlike operations, or while masses of men are handling deadly 
 weapons, an energetic rule, which requires instant obedience 
 without appeal, is most rightful. So in time of pestilence we 
 need a dictatorial authority. But besides an adequate necessity 
 for despotism, two conditions are essential to prevent cruel 
 abuse : first, the despotism must be impartial ; next, measures 
 equally energetic must be used to annihilate the CAUSES of evil, 
 and thus limit the despotism to the shortest time. In both 
 respects this despotic Act utterly, undeniably, indefensibly 
 breaks down. 
 
 I must not pass by one very singular argument, which is 
 pressed in conversation by the supporters of their Bill, in proof 
 that it is urgently necessary. They assert, (and alas ! it is too 
 well attested to deny,) that brothels are largely frequented by 
 married men. "Well! " say they : "are we to endure that a 
 husband shall frequent evil houses, consort with unsound women, 
 bring back disease on his unhappy wife, and transmit it to his 
 innocent children ? Think of the poor dear children ! Malignant 
 virus is being introduced into respectable families. We must 
 by any severity stop this contagion. You cannot stop it by the 
 ordinary process of law. This sharp malady needs sharp 
 remedies." So far, we might agree. One might expect them to 
 add: "Therefore, we must spy out these respectable family- 
 men, arrest them, cleanse them, and break up the brothels." 
 But instead of this, they reason : " Therefore, by operating on 
 the women, whether they like it or no, we must bring about,
 
 13 
 
 that respectable husbands shall find none but sound harlots in 
 the brothels." For my part, I find this to be a very masculine 
 argument: but I would rather, ten times over, sanction a limited 
 Turkish polygamy at once. 
 
 Finally, let us learn from the elaborate Report of Mr. JOHN 
 SIMON, medical officer to the Privy Council, to call this Bill by 
 its correct disgraceful name, "A Bill for warranting a woman 
 clean to those who wish to use her." 
 
 NOTE on page 4, line 4 from bottom : 
 
 Mr. E. K. PARSONS, Visiting Surgeon of the Portsmouth 
 Lock Hospital, was examined by the Committee ; and was asked 
 (398) whether, if the police by error bring up a really modest 
 woman to the surgeon, mistaking her for a harlot, the woman 
 signs a voluntary paper before the surgeon examines her. He 
 replies : " Yes, they all sign a voluntary submission, unless sent 
 ly order of a magistrate" The questioner continues (399), " But 
 a modest woman would decline to sign that paper, would she 
 not?" Reply: "No: for this reason. The police, believing 
 the correctness of their own impression (!), say : Very well : if 
 you do not sign that, you go to the Bench. And- then the 
 woman says in order to avoid that : Well, I do not mind going 
 into a private room, and speaking to Mr. PARSONS. And she will 
 sign the voluntary submission." (400.) Question : " Therefore 
 they [really modest women?] sign a voluntary submission, 
 under the fear of being taken before the magistrate ?" Reply ; 
 " Unquestionably." 
 
 That modest women should be brought up by the police 
 without cognizance of the magistrate, is a phenomenon so familiar 
 to the surgeon, that he knows exactly what is sure to happen. 
 The woman is sure to be terrified into signing her name, and 
 losing controul of her person for a whole year. The surgeon 
 makes the dry sharp statement without betraying whether he 
 approves or abhors. Is he afraid to offend his superiors ? 
 
 We here see how little the magistrate need concern himself 
 about it. 
 
 Mr. PARSONS also says (370) that the Police are very apt to 
 jump to the conclusion that a woman is a prostitute if they see 
 her out at night. 
 
 c
 
 14 
 
 PART H. THE MOKAL TREATMENT. 
 
 But a challenge has been thrown out to those who reject this 
 Bill, not to be mere obstructives, but to suggest some cure for the 
 frightful evil. To that task I now address myself. 
 
 No man of sense can imagine that immorality pervading a 
 nation can be quickly cured : nevertheless, measures can be 
 taken which will at once reduce and limit the mischief. "We can 
 leave off to do evil, while we learn to do good. We may pass 
 laws to punish those whose guilt is primary, and we may sup- 
 press the obvious and most effective incentives or facilities. 
 Beyond this, public institutions have to be improved and social 
 errors set right. Further yet, (what it would be vain even to 
 touch on in these pages,) where isolation, poverty, misery and 
 the crushing of population into pigsties, are the overpowering 
 causes of women's self-debasement, all improvement in the laws 
 of Land, in Building, in restricting the size of Towns, are of 
 course among the preventives of this most pernicious evil. In 
 general also, whatever abets roguery, ignorance and brutality, 
 abets also cruel unchastity. 
 
 (1.) The first head of Cure, is, obviously, to punish those 
 whose guilt is foremost and most fruitful : these are, the Seducer 
 and his Accomplices. Hitherto, there is no pretence in England 
 of punishing the Seducer, as such. Men, who alone make the 
 laws, make them with little account of women. One might 
 fancy that legislators either fear to be legislating against their 
 own sons, or are conscious of personal guilt : else why, for 600 
 years, have they been so very lax ? As to the seduction of their 
 own daughters, they have no fear; though they would shoot 
 through the heart the man who perpetrated such a thing. But 
 if it be only a poor girl, how much does either House of 
 Parliament care? 
 
 Women who are seduced are generally minors, who have no 
 legal power to give themselves away into marriage. Surely 
 then they have no legal power to give themselves away without 
 marriage. Nor yet have their parents a legal right to sell their 
 virtue, which is morally the worst form of being accessory to
 
 15 
 
 seduction. Those who have looked closely into these dreadful 
 matters, report that children of tender age are bought of a 
 wicked parent, or, if orphans, of some uncle or aunt, by a 
 brothel-keeper : she sells them in turn for a large price to some 
 rich customer, who is too delicate to risk infection : hence comes 
 a perpetual supply to the market. The law must defend young 
 girls' virtue, at least as sternly as it defends their property, alike 
 from strangers and from base kinsfolk. If a man run away 
 with an heiress, a ward of Chancery, though each party may love' 
 the other and desire marriage, the man is imprisoned for con- 
 tempt of Court, and cannot escape punishment either by claim- 
 ing to marry the lady, or by pleading that he never promised to 
 marry her. So tender is English law of the rich, and so reckless 
 of the daughters of the poor. It surely is time to change all 
 this fundamentally. 
 
 The seducer of a minor girl must not be allowed to plead 
 against her her own consent ; she has no right to give consent : 
 his act therefore fias the nature of a RAPE. Nor, that he did not 
 know her age : it was his duty to find out her age accurately. 
 Nor thirdly, should the man be allowed to recriminate, by say- 
 ing that the young woman had previously been unchaste. It is 
 always easy to impute such a thing, and difficult or odious to 
 refute it; and the dread of such a defence holds back women 
 and their near kin from having recourse to law. If indeed the 
 man assert that the woman definitely makes a trade of herself 
 to those who do not profess love ; that she was the solicitor, the 
 seducer, and he was the seduced ; this is quite to the purpose. 
 If he can prove it, he must be acquitted ; but anything short of 
 this is irrelevant, and the judge should forbid the man's counsel 
 from aspersing the woman. If she have fallen once, that does 
 not justify him in seducing her to a second offence. While she 
 tries to conceal her shame, the law must presume that she is 
 struggling to keep in an honourable course ; therefore to draw 
 her out of it, is, SEDUCTION. 
 
 A man who cajoles a silly person to give away a valuable 
 estate or sign his name to a large cheque, for no substantial 
 consideration, will not be allowed by the law to keep his prize. 
 He must have known that he was cheating, not faiiiy buying. 
 The same is true of the seducer, who robs a woman of that 
 which he cannot replace. At present, not seduction at all, but 
 only breach of promise of marriage, is an offence. The law
 
 16 
 
 throws on the -woman the burden of proving the promise : but a 
 cunning man can generally secure that no legal proof of this 
 shall be possible. Also by promising that he will yet marry 
 her, provided that she hold her peace, or otherwise playing on 
 her hopes or her love, he wholly evades punishment and gene- 
 rally even public knowledge. It is more important that those 
 who are near of kin to the woman, than that the woman herself, 
 should have a right of action against the seducer : but if, before 
 long, we get a Public Prosecutor, it were better still that on the 
 affidavit of one or more of the woman's kinsfolk, and with 
 necessary precautions against fraud, it should be his duty to 
 bring the offender to justice ; who, if convicted, must be pro- 
 nounced a felon. The enactment of such a law, even before 
 any prosecution took place under it, would strike terror into 
 profligates of the upper classes, and save numbers of weak- 
 minded inexperienced girls, who are dazzled by flatteries, atten- 
 tions, finery and the hope of raising themselves in society ; girls 
 who cannot be saved by any public instruction, and have no 
 wise teacher at home. When full majority is attained, it seems 
 necessary to leave a woman who can give herself away in mar- 
 riage to define at her own will what she chooses to call marriage. 
 But if once the seduction of those under age is severely punished, 
 a different sentiment will soon pervade society. Public law is the 
 great teacher of morals. At the age of 21 a young woman is far 
 wiser than at 1 8 ; and the infamy of seduction will be so much 
 increased as to be a new protection to her. 
 
 It is needless here to define carefully what should be the 
 seducer's punishment. If his act be pronounced felony, fathers 
 will never wink at such transgression in sons. But it seems to 
 be a sound principle, that one who offends from avarice, as a 
 seducer's accomplice, should (besides other infliction) be heavily 
 fined ; while one who offends through animal passion, should 
 suffer at least corporal chastisement with public disgrace. A 
 younger man, guilty of seducing a minor, should (in my opinion) 
 be scourged, and put to hard labour ; scourged, not so severely 
 as to cause compassion for his animal suffering, but severely 
 enough to mark the disgrace. But what is to be said of elder 
 men thus guilty ? I have been informed that it is well known 
 to a London Society formed for the protection of women, that 
 men of 50 and 60 years are great corruptors of children aged 
 14 or 15, one after another ; whom they entice by gifts of con-
 
 17 
 
 fectionery, and other small trifles. This is firmly believed ; but 
 to get legal proof is most difficult, as the law now stands. Such 
 execrable conduct seems to deserve hard labour for life. The 
 older the man and the younger the girl, the fiercer ought 
 punishment to be ; especially where it is clear that marriage 
 between them would be preposterous, and no love can have 
 existed. 
 
 A grave question will have to be discussed, how to punish 
 the seducer who is himself a married man ; who therefore cannot 
 offer to his victim the reparation of marriage, such as it is. 
 Guilt is piled upon guilt, in the very common case of a married 
 man corrupting his female servant. In these as in other cases, 
 mercy towards an innocent wife distracts the deliberations of 
 justice. It suffices now to say, that human destiny and divine 
 wisdom force each heart to bleed through the crime of one near 
 and dear, and that the legislator must not be more tender over 
 the wife of the seducing adulterer than over the wife of the 
 poacher or swindler. But long deliberation and combined 
 advice are needful for fixing penalties. 
 
 Another question will arise, concerning tribunals. In every 
 case of alleged seduction, if there be an ordinary tribunal, it 
 appears to me obvious, that half of the jury should be women. 
 But if the seducer confess his guilt, and desire to marry the 
 woman, this ought not to supersede further law- proceedings, 
 but (as I think) the judge should summon, and preside in, a 
 secret /<ww%-tribunal or rather parliament, formed by him from 
 kinsfolk of both parties, with free leave to all to speak in their 
 turn. Two complications have to be considered. The kinsfolk 
 may say, that one or both families disapproved the marriage, 
 and that the pair have committed their offence, expressly in 
 order to extort consent. It will have to be considered, whether 
 the judge should have discretion to inflict in that case some dis- 
 agreeable corporal punishment on the seducer, even though 
 -marriage follow. Next, the woman may have been so shocked 
 at the man's baseness, (of which nobody can know all that she 
 would know, ) that she recoils with horror at the idea of being 
 his partner for life. This would be extremely rare. A weak 
 Woman would seldom indeed show such spirit. But if she did, 
 it implies peculiar malignity of baseness in him : apparently his 
 offer of marriage should go for nothing, and he should be 
 punished as if he had not made it : especially if he may have
 
 18 
 
 made tho offer, from foreseeing that it would be refused. But 
 all these matters also would need mature consideration. Once 
 more. The woman ought never to be brought into public court, 
 but her evidence, when needed, should be taken in private by 
 the judge or his deputy. 
 
 There is another aggravated form of seduction, which calls 
 for intense severity of punishment ; viz., when the criminal has 
 gained his end by administering a potion to his victim. With 
 our omnipresent drink-shops, this is in many towns the com- 
 monest way in which vile plebeians corrupt girls of their own 
 order. If the public sale of intoxicating drink be ever so 
 decidedly put down, it might not wholly extinguish this atrocity. 
 A change in drinking habits would aid : yet, since opiates of 
 one sort or other may always be had, the crime will be possible. 
 Whatever the woman's age, the man should be liable to the full 
 severity of law, if it be ostensible that he induced her to drink, 
 as an aid to his plot against her virtue. The fatal cup equalizes 
 all ages, so that the woman of 30 becomes as defenceless as the 
 child of 14. Perhaps the crime should be simply called Eape. 
 
 In the First Part, I alluded to another abomination, which 
 may seem richly to deserve the title of felony ; viz. the frequent- 
 ing of brothels by a married man. Yet it is not clear how to 
 punish this singularly wicked conduct, (singularly wicked, in its 
 first aspect,) without too much cruelty to the woman who is 
 aggrieved, viz. the wife. But as soon as houses of illfame are 
 broken up, in accordance with the purpose and spirit of our 
 ancient law, which is still unrepealed, society will be relieved 
 of these awful impurities, so hideously cruel to wives. But 
 surely, without awaiting the slow process of a Divorce Court, 
 without any necessity of absolute divorce or legal separation, 
 a woman who even suspects such a crime in her husband ought 
 to have immediate defence, by retaining full legal rights over 
 her own person, alike against her husband, as against a total 
 stranger. Both sexes must be on an equality. Here, as usual, 
 our law is infamously unjust to women. I cannot believe that 
 such iniquities will be much longer endured. On many grounds, 
 wives must retain woman's indefeasible right. The horrible 
 enormity now so freely unveiled, gives this a foremost place 
 among Women's Wrongs. 
 
 Not to be too hard upon any class of offenders, a conjecture 
 may be thrown out concerning the "greyheaded gentlemanly
 
 19 
 
 men," who, in so great numbers, visit courtezans in their pri- 
 vate apartments, to the surprize and scandal of the women 
 themselves. First, it may be merely the women's fancy, that 
 they are married men. They may be widowers, or old bache- 
 lors. Next, they may be men, whom marriage without love has 
 sensualized, not purified; as happens with Oriental princes: 
 and when they have as many children as they desire, they may 
 persuade themselves that they are doing just the kindest thing 
 to their wives in transferring their outward demonstrations of 
 affection to others whom they love neither less nor more than 
 they love their wives; having indeed an easy goodnatured 
 friendliness all round. There are many men, whose whole 
 creed is materialistic ; whose morality has no back-bone ; who, 
 if they think at all, think general principles of morals to be a 
 weakness ; who are kindly enough, glad to do services, liberal 
 with money, and really amiable ; who would be shocked at the 
 thought of injuring a woman, and fancy that by judicious libe- 
 rality they do kindness to a respectable courtezan, and also buy 
 immunity for their wives. Such men are likely to be most found 
 among the elderly and the rich ; which may explain the dispro- 
 portionate number of them, which shocks and puzzles the simple 
 women. Younger husbands will not come to them, and poorer 
 ones cannot. In all such cases no " dear children" are injured. 
 (Alas ! where are the harlots' children ? ohj gross and hideous 
 violation of Nature's laws, which are God's !) But these gentle- 
 manly old men, though they may not cause physical mischief to 
 their wives or children, not the less are guilty against the com- 
 munity. Men, however healthy, who, without even any mutual 
 compact, share a woman among them, are by so unnatural a 
 practice liable to create in her foul disease, with incalculable 
 result. 
 
 What is now the legal punishment of being accessory to 
 seduction, I am not aware ; but when gain is its object, not only 
 must the offence be criminal, but the pecuniary penalty 'needs 
 to be of the severest kind. For the ordinary trade of the 
 brothel-keeper heavy fines are evidently the appropriate punish- 
 ment ; but they must increase rapidly on every conviction, so as 
 to become ruinous. Moreover stringent precautions are needed, 
 that the fines be not paid by rich customers. A philanthropic 
 lady who struggles to rescue fallen women, and hereby sees and 
 knows much which is behind the scones, writes to me : " The
 
 20 
 
 well-to-do brothels hero are chiefly maintained by rich merchants 
 of middle and venerable aye. One was about to be closed, but was 
 endowed speedily by a rich man to keep it going." Evidently 
 the pecuniary penalties ought to increase on such a scale, as to 
 break down even colossal fortunes. But that is not all. To 
 make any pecuniary gift, beyond what may be called common 
 charity, for no substantial return, to one who has been fined 
 for brothel-keeping ; or to pay the fine ; should be made felony, 
 punishable with prison and hard labour. Whether any but a 
 plebeian Parliament, or a Parliament in which Women hold 
 numerous seats, will ever enact penalties of adequate severity ; 
 many will doubt. But now that these horrible movements 
 towards contented national impurity force chaste and modest 
 persons (and not least, those women who are our chief pride, ) 
 to look at the enormous evil with steady eyes ; I cannot yet 
 believe that the existing Parliament will fail to admit sound 
 principle, however timidly and weakly they may apply it. 
 
 (2.) The second great measure, needful for many other 
 reasons, but equally needful against the Great Social Evil, is, 
 . the suppressing of drinkshops, of tipple houses, as our old law 
 calls them. I have already observed, that they are dens of 
 seduction. A woman is first poisoned, then ruined ; while the 
 potion bedims her understanding, and impairs her self-controul. 
 Chaste feeling is benumbed, before the victim herself is at all 
 aware. Next, the unhappy harlots often avow, that except under 
 the stupor of gin, they could not ply their hateful trade. We 
 may try to imagine what sort of men come into their bosom ; 
 with what foulness of breath, with what coarse sensuality, and 
 what not beside ! It is shocking to suggest such things ; but 
 one may well believe that to a sober harlot many a tipsy smoker 
 is inexpressibly disgusting. Who can be accosted in the street 
 by young girls, with tender and refined features, and not be 
 ready to sink into the earth at our national iniquity ! Who can 
 avoid the intense conviction, that thousands of poor girls loathe 
 their trade, and can only carry it on at all by benumbing their per- 
 ceptions? These are sufficient reasons for striking at the "tipple- 
 shops : " but in the cause of young men, hitherto outwardly 
 chaste, the argument reaches wider, to a general abstinence from 
 all intoxicating drink in their private homes, a topic which will 
 come up under my next head. Here I will only add, that the 
 drinkshops are fatal chiefly by debauching young people under age.
 
 21 
 
 Careful parents cannot save boys above 15 from their influence. 
 Few probably who attain their majority without a taste for such 
 liquor are afterwards corrupted by it. The shops hinder parents 
 from duly educating their children ; which suffices to make them 
 indefensible. 
 
 It is not to my immediate argument, yet it is of prime 
 importance, that the same drink is from day to day cause or 
 means of foul murder. Among the conditions for preventing both 
 violent crime and the great Social Evil, the foremost rank must 
 be given to a prohibition of the open drink-trade. The liquor is 
 strictly a narcotic poison. Chemists class alcohol with opium. 
 Physiologists pronounce it to spoil the gastric juice, harden food 
 in the stomach, mar the purity of the blood, chill the body, and 
 lower vitality. To be tender over the trade in alcoholic drinking 
 is more unreasonable than to be tender over a trade in opium- 
 eating : for opium does not produce crime, immodesty, impurity 
 and pestilence. 
 
 (3.) But further : several of our public institutions need to be 
 fundamentally reorganized, primarily our Churches. Both sexes 
 in common need frank instruction in detail, concerning matters 
 to them of prime importance ; which instruction they never get. 
 These institutions pretend to teach Morals; but they do not. 
 They are chiefly concerned with lofty doctrines, which, whatever 
 their value to elder hearers, shoot over young people's heads. 
 The Churches, by their pretensions, and by the inordinate 
 reverence paid to them, so preoccupy the field, that other moral 
 teachers would have no chance of an audience. Nearly all 
 women who are seduced by men, are seduced at a tender age, at 
 which they cannot have the faintest prospect of the dreadful 
 future which awaits them. It must be imputed (I suppose) to 
 the faithful warnings given by Catholic priests, that Irish 
 Catholic women are so chaste : let this be some set-off against 
 our Protestant horror of the confessional. Nevertheless, the 
 experience of at least all Latin Europe, besides the natural 
 instinct of every pure heart, tells us, that Priestesses, not Priests, 
 ought to instruct girls as to the morality of the sex, and the 
 cruel results of its violation, Let boys be taught under a man, 
 girls under a woman, perhaps a matron ; so as to secure that on 
 this subject, which is of all the most vital to young people, they 
 shall not have to learn from their own bitter experience. It is 
 now wholly omitted. Girls are not even warned, what an odious
 
 22 
 
 hypocrisy every mercenary marriage is liable to become : how 
 great is the evil and the danger from marriage without love, and 
 how unnatural is the legal relation thus superimposed. Much 
 less are they taught, not to be lenient to those men who have 
 debased themselves before marriage, or urged to exact from men 
 a high standard of chastity. Much more might be hinted here ; 
 but Priestesses will find plenty to say, without hints from men. 
 A clergyman also will be able to speak more simply and instruc- 
 tively to youths in the absence of women ; and spiritual instruc- 
 tion will be only the more effective, when built upon a broad 
 foundation of faithful and detailed moral teaching. 
 
 There is one important matter, which young men need espe- 
 cially to be taught, viz., that at no time of life is any man, mar- 
 ried or unmarried, exempt from the essential duty of curbing 
 animal impulses. In the struggles of a young man against 
 unchaste surroundings and raw passions, nothing so paralyses 
 his will, as to be told, that some men have from God the " gift" 
 of continence, and others have not ; and that to those who have 
 it not, marriage is the rightful vent. This doctrine is disastrously 
 prominent in the Anglican marriage-service, and is borrowed 
 from St. Paul. But that great and deep-hearted apostle was 
 unmarried, and had no personal experience. He writes, not as 
 one revealing supernatural communications, but as imparting 
 his best wisdom ; indeed desiring charitably to apologize for those 
 who had less self-controul than himself. It is not the less cer- 
 tain, that the lewd are encouraged in their lewdness, and the 
 weak straggler is made weaker still, by each saying to himself, 
 or indeed publishing one to the other, Ah ! you see I have 
 no "gift" of continence. The malady is in the mind, in the 
 base imagination; and one condition of cure, is, that the false 
 doctrine be cast out. Marriage is not (what I once heard a 
 Catholic Professor bitterly declare was Protestant doctrine) "a 
 legal mode of giving loose rein to the lust of the flesh." A 
 married man is bound sternly to act the celibate during long 
 months ; and in some cases totally, through the weak health of 
 his wife. (Not but that even here our law most cruelly treats a 
 wife ; who is stript of that self-defence against a brutal sensual 
 husband, which every female dog and cat retains and exercises.) 
 Notoriously, a moderated polygamy brings no physical evil to 
 any of the parties : it follows, that monogamy cannot exhaust a 
 man's physical passion. It is also notorious, that the unbridled
 
 23 
 
 polygamy of some Oriental princes, which aims to satiate animal 
 desire, enervates both mind and body. It follows again, that 
 a firm self-restraint is necessary and salutary for every man. 
 Equally certain is it, that a ship-crew of young men, chiefly 
 under the age of five-and-twenty, and picked for masculine 
 vigour, may go to the Arctic regions for a year or two, and 
 return in splendid condition, without seeing a woman's face. It 
 is therefore a pernicious falsehood, that violation of woman's 
 chastity can be needed for man's health. 
 
 I too well know, that some physicians will flatly contradict 
 me. I once received from a medical man (I believe, in reply to 
 some papers which I had written on Chastity) a book entitled 
 Physical Religion, which enforced, that a young man is bound, 
 in duty to his body, to consort with harlots. Forsooth, this is 
 the way to health ! The same book treated as a dangerous 
 disease, for which the remedy is to be unchastity, that pheno- 
 menon, which every chaste young man knows to be the mode by 
 which God in Nature provides that he shall have no unhealth 
 through chastity. A medical man must know, that it is but 
 the counterpart to a like provision in women. Now if a more 
 plausible physician, teaching less monstrous doctrine, tell me 
 that there are exceptional men, of abnormal passions, who do 
 (in plain words) " really need" that a woman shall be sacrificed 
 to them; I wish to know, whether the other sex has never a 
 like excuse, and whether he ever recommends a woman to be 
 unchaste. Men expect such abnormal women to die in prefer- 
 ence. How loose would young women become, if they opened 
 their ears to such doctrine as is poured in upon young men ! A 
 woman who hesitates, (it is said) is lost. Young men also need 
 to spurn with horror such doctrines. To confute them, it would 
 suffice to reply that physical and moral law are in harmony ; 
 that the practices which are stigmatized as vice because they 
 lead to disease as well as to injustice, cannot be the appointed 
 remedies for unhealth ; that what debases the soul, is no fit cure 
 for the body. And yet, for young people, to abhor is better than 
 to confute. Moreover, a young woman by unchastity sacrifices 
 herself; a young man injures another more than himself: which 
 is much worse. But as regards this medical lore, it is permis- 
 sible to ask, whence the physician got it ? I frankly say that I 
 regard such " authorities" as dupes of their own patients, who,
 
 24 
 
 to cover the offences which they have to confess, throw upon 
 physical causes the weakness or depravity of their will. 
 
 The ordinary preachings of the clergy, I believe, laboriously 
 miss the mark. One illustration may perhaps suffice for many. 
 In a certain Oxford College the authorities were distressed to 
 believe that immoralities had crept in, though the outward aspect 
 of the young men was decorous. The clerical Fellow who had 
 to preach in the college chapel determined to speak faithfully and 
 plainly. He took for his text the Seventh Commandment. The 
 larger part of his discourse was against Adultery. He then 
 explained that the Hebrew word was not limited so much as 
 this English term, but it included other fleshly sin, especially 
 Seduction of women, on the wickedness of which he further 
 dilated. He concluded by touching in the most bashful way on 
 a word, which (apparently) he dared to take into his lips only by 
 quoting a text from St. Paul, viz. the ugly* word "Fornication"; 
 and earnestly implored his hearers to remember that they were 
 called to be Saints and were dedicated to God from their baptism, 
 that it behoved them to be soldiers and servants of Christ, that it 
 was an awful thing to pollute "the temples of the Holy Spirit," 
 and more to this effect, without one hint that the unchastity 
 of man is an inevitable and frightful cruelty to woman. 
 
 I heard free comments upon this from young gentlemen who 
 were on good terms with their own consciences. Adultery and 
 Seduction, they avowed, were utter scoundrelism. It was need- 
 less to say a word more about them. At least, (said one,) if a 
 gentleman did seduce a poor girl, at any rate he ought not to 
 abandon her; but to make her an allowance, to look after her now 
 and then, to maintain her child, if he had one by her : in short, 
 he must honourably take the consequences of his own act. Never- 
 theless, on the whole, they did not approve of Seduction. A 
 man could not exactly put the woman back where she had been. 
 It was really a shame to spoil a woman's after-chances. But as 
 to Fornication, that was quite another thing. A man found a 
 woman already spoiled : he did not do her any harm, poor 
 creature ! As to the talk about being Saints, the preacher must 
 know that very few people are Saints ; many of the best and 
 most honourable men are not ; in fact many of them are, not a 
 little, letter than sanctimonious persons ; and it was want of 
 
 * It strictly means, Frequenting of Vaults*
 
 25 
 
 common sense not to know that they (the young men) did not 
 make any such profession, though they were forced to go to 
 chapel. 
 
 On this occasion, the preacher had the disadvantage of being 
 unmarried and on the youthful side of manhood ; but he had the 
 advantage of speaking in the entire absence of women. If, 
 instead of directing the young men's eyes into books, he had 
 turned them to the real facts of the world, they were not so hard- 
 hearted or dead of sentiment as to be proof against pointed words. 
 They were quite able to understand, that if a woman were buried 
 alive by each soldier of an army flinging one handful of dust on 
 her while she lay tied on a plank, no soldier could free himself 
 from the guilt of cruel murder, by saying, "It was not my 
 handful that suffocated her." The murder is not the less horrible 
 for being a collective act. So is it with the wretched harlot. Nor 
 could her destructive trade exist at all, or be dreamed of, if men 
 were chaste. And to her it is a loathsome misery. Would 
 young men with a spark of good feeling, if they realized this, if 
 this ivere pressed upon their conscience, take the matter so gaily ? 
 But precisely these cardinal points seem to be omitted in church- 
 routine. If instead of the Seventh Commandment the preacher 
 had taken a text from Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH, "A licentious ago 
 is parent of a cruel age," he might have hit their consciences 
 harder. And as regards personal considerations, he might have 
 asked, whether they make up their minds to live all their lives 
 with harlots: whether even now, they could bear mother or 
 sisters to know their unchastity : whether a man does not become 
 a hypocrite, even a liar, inwardly humiliated and self-despising, 
 timid and anxious, who has always a dread lest the women 
 whom he respects should learn his secret : whether, if hereafter 
 he seek a lady as a life-companion, when his bride clung to his 
 bosom, he would not wish it to be from fervent self-abandoning 
 love : whether he would not be inexpressibly shocked to learn, 
 that she had no love for him at all, and was only seeking for a 
 fleshly gratification : whether she would not, as certainly, be 
 disgusted to know that this was exactly the thing which he had 
 habitually and deliberately done himself : whether it is just in a 
 man to expect in a wife antenuptial chastity, if ho do not himself 
 come chaste to her : whether he must not condemn himself as 
 self-degraded by that which he would regard as self-degradation 
 in her : whether finally, knowing as we do the delicacy and
 
 26 
 
 complexity of our bodies, and, when once we plunge into unna- 
 tural vice, the tenacity of disease, whether a man who in youth 
 is profligate, can ever be quite sure that he does not carry with 
 him afterwards into marriage some seeds of disease which may 
 ruin the health and happiness of an innocent, loving and trust- 
 ing woman. How then would he detest his own past, how 
 would he condemn his fraudulent concealment of it, if he 
 found wife and children to suffer from it ! Few young men, in 
 my belief, are so hardened, as not to shudder when such things 
 are pressed home. But alas ! preachers preach things transcen- 
 dental to those who have not climbed up the first stairs. But, 
 to go back to a former point. The effect of happy marriage is 
 often grossly misrepresented to young men. A true love-mar- 
 riage purifies the debased imagination : that is the first gain. 
 It teaches practically, how empty is carnal, and how solid is 
 spiritual delight. It reveals to a man the heart of woman, 
 through his intimate knowledge of the one heart which is his 
 own. It gives him, not only one wife, but a hundred frank- 
 hearted and pleasant sisters. If young men knew, what is the 
 constant joy of a simple loving wife, they would not be such 
 fools as to defer or sacrifice it for frivolous luxury, much less for 
 hired embraces. 
 
 At the same time, to fortify young women, more is needed 
 than moral instruction. They need to gain such industrial know- 
 ledge or skill, as will fetch a price in the market. They must 
 not be driven to the pit of ruin by destitution threatening them. 
 We must not endure an unjust depreciation of work, merely 
 because done by female hands, nor their exclusion from business 
 for which they have aptitude. Nor yet should high education 
 (so called) be allowed, even among the gentry, to supersede 
 industrial training. Many a pitiable tale is whispered concern- 
 ing daughters of clergymen, and of young women reared in 
 every luxury, but ruined by calamities unforeseen. The Society* 
 which struggles to find work for women needs and deserves help 
 a hundredfold. It is a matter of national concern. 
 
 Handsome young women who are poor, are allured by 
 flattery, by love of finery and of passing as " ladies," as well as 
 
 by indolence ; indeed, by the great gap which separates the 
 
 
 
 * " Society for Promoting the Employment of Women :" Secretary, Miss 
 Crewe : Office, 19 Langham Place, London (W).
 
 27 
 
 continuous toil of a virtuous girl, from the easy life of her who 
 listens to a man's base proposals. Such young women might 
 in great numbers be saved, by the faithful warnings of a 
 "Woman-teacher in their tenderer years; nevertheless, with a 
 sadly large fraction of them such moral instruction might be 
 insufficient in their frivolous girlhood, until seducers are dealt 
 with as felons. 
 
 To fortify chastity in young men, the first point is, not to 
 break down that modesty and sensitiveness which they naturally 
 have, in common with girls. I have read an energetic letter 
 from an American mother, who insists that the natural mysteries 
 of the sexes must be taught, as mothers know how, to little boys 
 as well as little girls, at an age when such mysteries can move 
 only amazement and keen interest, without any possible admix- 
 ture of passion. She had so taught her little boys. The matter 
 deserves mature thought. Such a method effectually hinders 
 evil curiosity and the impure talk of boys one to another; at 
 least insofar as it is a boasting of superior knowledge, and a 
 taunting of younger boys with ignorance or modesty. But to 
 cleanse our schools, if they inherit any traditions of the past, is 
 truly to cleanse an Augean stable. For myself, I am firmly 
 convinced that many things in the school-classics perniciously 
 inflame passion in boys and young men : so do many approved 
 English poems, plays, sculptures and paintings. All such things 
 are a great cruelty to a boy who struggles to keep his imagina- 
 tion undefiled. Let us not hear the reply, " To the pure all 
 things are pure;" "A nice man is a man with nasty ideas;" 
 nor other such folly as anonymous writers pour forth on those 
 whom they call prudes. The glaring fact is, that we are net 
 pure. With 8,000 street harlots in London alone, what 
 utter nonsense is such talk ! It is clear that a gravely large 
 fraction of us is early and profoundly corrupted : no one can tell 
 how small a spark may cause explosion. And as a reclaimed 
 drunkard cannot safely take even a little sip of the once fatal 
 liquor, so who of us can toll how dangerous, to him who has 
 hardly escaped the pollutions of the world, are even reminiscences 
 of his ancient plague? Will you scold at him as a prude, 
 because, cherishing inward purity, remembering his past with 
 hatred, he chastens his eyes and his ears, and dreads every 
 voluptuous suggestion ? And has any man, artist or poet, in 
 an apartment full of straw and gunpowder, any right to scatter
 
 28 
 
 sparks abroad ? But, if we start with children, hitherto inno- 
 cent, why do we treat boys so differently from girls ? No one 
 imagines that a girl will be made purer by plunging her 
 through impure reading or any thing that excites voluptuous 
 thought : how then can any person of common sense think that 
 this method is desirable for boys, who are so much more in- 
 flammable ? Manifestly the fact is, that people desire chastity 
 in their daughters greatly, and in their sons very feebly : that is 
 the true key to the whole. Boys are to be brave ; and if they 
 are (what is gently called) "irregular," it does not much matter. 
 But when this "irregularity" is sport to the one sex, at the cost 
 of death to the other, the nation that permits such crime cannot 
 evade the judgments of God. In the very same proportion that 
 individuals are profligate, the State needs to be severe. So it is 
 when high robbery and incendiarism are rife : so should it be 
 when tender girls are execrably abused. 
 
 Nevertheless, even when the frightful ordeal of school has 
 deeply polluted a young man's mind, yet while he retains 
 tenderness and refinement and outward modesty, it is impossible 
 for him not to start with horror from the touch of a common 
 woman. There is something surpassingly disgusting in the idea 
 of bestowing fond kisses, the symbol and pledge of warm and 
 faithful love, on one who not only is not loved, but to-morrow is 
 cast away: one, whom we may deeply pity, and yet must loathe, 
 while she touts for custom. The lie, the hypocrisy, the unnatu- 
 ral monstrosity of intimately embracing a person whom we do 
 not love, might seem too hateful for any man of ordinary sensi- 
 tiveness to endure : and from this point of view man's guilt in 
 coarse impurity is a hundredfold that of a woman in her first 
 fall. For the woman is generally courted under pretence of 
 love, and easily persuades herself that her suitor loves her, and 
 she can trust her own darling : others may be faithless, but he 
 will not. But a man, in casting himself to a harlot, neither 
 loves her, nor imagines that she loves him. It is but a brutal 
 bargain, with an absolute minimum of enjoyment. A kiss of 
 real love may be ecstatic in delight, as it is a pledge of life-long 
 union : but what can be more empty or contemptible, than to 
 kiss lips which we do not love ? Why do I dwell on this ? 
 Because I cannot but believe, that scarcely any young man, 
 hitherto outwardly pure, (whatever his inward corruption through 
 a calamitous history,) could so degrade himself as to rush into a
 
 29 
 
 harlot's embrace, unless he had first taken off the edge of his 
 good sense, his delicacy, and his self-controul, by certain glasses 
 of wine, or other intoxicating drink. Prima facie, the same 
 thing is to be believed concerning soldiers and sailors. To stop 
 the bar and the tap, might almost in itself suffice to save for the 
 Government the health of the two services, and spare to the 
 nation the intolerable humiliation and misery of this ill-omened 
 " Contagious Diseases' Act." Orgies of impurity to young men 
 at Oxford, in my undergraduate days, could only go on as 
 sequel of a wine-party. Apparently, without the wine preced- 
 ing, no freshman could be corrupted. Wine does certainly 
 precipitate even elder men into talk of which they would be 
 thoroughly ashamed in their normal state ; a phenomenon which 
 reveals how easily it may disarm young men of their usual 
 delicacy. If then individuals, society or the State, desire to 
 arrest debasing vice, most cruel to women, ruinous to family life, 
 to industry, to public health and to the nobler virtues ; very 
 severe restriction must be put on strong drink by influence, by 
 custom and by law. So far as minors are concerned, perhaps 
 no measure of prohibition can be too strong. It is the first 
 thing needed, it is absolutely needed, and the effect on- public 
 morality and public health will be prodigious. 
 
 (4) Another institution which needs fundamental reform, in the 
 cause of public purity and modesty, is, the treatment of female 
 maladies by male surgeons and physicians. A poor fallen 
 woman told her story frankly, to a lady who told me of it; 
 that the base man who first seduced and abandoned her, com- 
 municated to her a vile disease ; that she went into hospital for 
 it, and was there tended by a young surgeon, who took so many 
 liberties with her under plea of medical necessity, that he gained 
 an overpowering familiarity, and corrupted her a second time. 
 After this she was unable to recover herself, and fell into the 
 rank and file of that most pitiable female army. The simple 
 tale seems to lift up a curtain and disclose unimagined abuses. 
 I have seen in the handwriting of a purehearted Catholic 
 dignitary the statement, that Catholic priests often hear in the 
 confessional the distress of married women, who do not know 
 how to behave towards surgeons who attend them as man-mid- 
 wives, and indulge in "impure handling." To be told such 
 things even in isolated cases is enough to make one shudder 
 at existing practices. Allow that old men and married men
 
 30 
 
 (though age, which naturally destroys bashfulness, is not always 
 favourable to that modesty and chastity, to which at every age 
 man is as solemnly bound as woman, of which moreover the 
 destruction is more hateful in the old man and far more inex- 
 cusable,) yet allowing that elder men must sometimes be called 
 in, as a last resort, to advise in some female ailments, neverthe- 
 less in a well-ordered community this would be the exception, 
 not the rule. It would be confined to the case of extreme 
 suffering, which of itself overpowers female bashfulness, and, 
 by the compassion which it excites, thoroughly chastens a 
 physician's heart. But it is at least as improper for young 
 medical students to explore the anatomy of the female, or treat 
 any of the diseases of women, as for women to treat the diseases 
 peculiar to men. Nay, it is far worse. For, whatever is peculiar 
 to the male sex can only be hideous and repulsive to a woman : 
 therefore nothing of the kind, in painted anatomy or in real life, 
 can ever deprave a female practitioner. But that which is 
 hidden of the woman is alluring to the man, and, in so far, un- 
 doubtedly tends to corrupt him. As just said, when a woman is 
 in acute pain, compassion purifies the surgeon's heart ; but this 
 does not apply to the study of paintings, to the anatomy of a 
 female corpse, or to that horrible introspection of scores of 
 women turned in a heap out of vans. It is a belief too general 
 to be safely slighted, that young medical students are more 
 licentious than other young men ; and an ancient commonplace 
 may here apply : " those are more likely to commit crime, who 
 can more easily hide their guilt." He who has medical know- 
 ledge thinks that if by trespass he contract infection, he can 
 heal himself in privacy : another youth would need to reveal it 
 to a physician. The young surgeon, with more to inflame him, 
 has also less to frighten him. Surgeons are men, and their 
 chastity is not always firm. Another lady who has opened 
 herself frankly to me, states, that at a certain Penitentiary, 
 when a surgeon was called in to treat a case of severe accident, 
 several of the girls told the matron that they knew him well, as 
 a constant frequenter of brothels. It is difficult to imagine how 
 any medical man can retain delicacy, who has to go through 
 such a business-like operation as inspecting a long string of 
 women in the shortest possible time ; even if we have not attained 
 the almost miraculous rapidity of the French surgeons, whom 
 the women seem to obey more promptly than Chasseurs could
 
 31 
 
 manoeuvre at the word of command. If all England be scourged 
 by the Bill of Extension, we might well apprehend that the 
 whole tribe of surgeons would become as immodest as the 
 women. But surely the whole principle is a fundamental error. 
 If we could look at the matter with fresh eyes, I believe we 
 should call our present practices a mischievous and intolerable 
 indecency. We need to return to the sentiment of all antiquity 
 and of all Eastern people, which was also that of all Europe. 
 But, when modern science arose, men kept it to themselves, and 
 thereby expelled women from their natural rightful place of 
 physicians and surgeons to women. Let the study of female 
 diseases and female anatomy be withheld from young men in 
 the public hospitals and medical schools, at least as soon as 
 enough women have been made competent. A few years will 
 suffice, if there is but force of will in the women of the nation. 
 The 20,000 already spent on one hospital in Devonport, erected 
 for the base object of supplying the sailors with " safe and 
 sound" companions, would probably have sufficed to raise up the 
 female practitioners needful for their own sex. Not only would 
 they minister in child-birth and in general female illnesses, but 
 they would be invaluable in rescuing the unhappy harlots. To 
 women-physicians the poor lost ones would come willingly, 
 whenever it was necessary. No compulsion would be needed, 
 no agonizing shame would be incurred, none of them would be 
 hardened in depravity. Priestesses and female surgeons com- 
 bined, would carry out a truly great work. Women are not 
 only the natural purifiers of men ; they are also the natural 
 rescuers of their own sex, to whom no good man can come very 
 near. They would kindly and pitifully withdraw the harlot 
 from her dreadful course, would cherish her modesty, aid her to 
 conceal her shame, throw a veil over the past ; and instead of 
 branding " Prostitute" on her forehead, would strive to mix her 
 in the crowd of unspotted women. Many of those uncounted 
 thousands might be thus rescued by the tender intervention of 
 ministering angels, if Parliament would but assign proper funds, 
 so as to equip women for the task. Do you set male surgeons 
 to a compulsory introspection of these pitiable outcasts ? Oh, 
 how can men be so cruel on the one hand, or so unconscious of 
 cruelty on the other ! It is women's work : men have no 
 business to touch it, or to study it. Greek, Turk and Indian 
 cry out shame upon them.
 
 32 
 
 I cannot here avoid to add, that a Female Medical College 
 already exists in Fitzroy Square, London. It has excellent 
 Professors, ardent in the cause. The teacher in Midwifery is 
 the eminent Dr. MURPHY, Professor of that branch in University 
 College, London. The Earl of SHAFTESBTJKY is President. It 
 has also energetic pupils, who quickly get practice as midwives. 
 It only needs funds, but needs them urgently, to enlarge the 
 course of instruction and secure its permanence. Ultimately, of 
 course, the Professors in most branches ought to be women. 
 Here, alas! we encounter a grievous and most surprizing pheno- 
 menon, that some women whom every one would expect to be 
 zealous friends of this institution, are not merely cold and dis- 
 dainful to it, but seem to have a pleasure in vilifying it. The 
 ground of their attack is, that the curriculum is not sufficiently 
 extended, and it ought to have a Hospital of its own. But I 
 read, that wholly uneducated midwives have better success with 
 women in childbirth than the most accomplished male physicians : 
 and it is certainly rash to make so light of Professor MUBPHY'S 
 diligent instructions, to say nothing of the other distinguished 
 Professors. But, as soon as money comes in, the curriculum will 
 be extended. The Hospital, which those ladies so dictatorially 
 claim, will need many thousands a year. If they would aid this 
 Infant institution, instead of assailing it, its funds might soon 
 be enlarged. 
 
 (5.) It is time to pass to another topic. A standing army, 
 with barrack life, and martial law in time of peace, is too im- 
 moral and too tyrannical an institution for a wise people to 
 endure. Thousands, I am persuaded, have this conviction deep 
 in their hearts; but they think change so hopeless, that they 
 hold their peace. Mr. JOHN STUAET MTLL, during his brilliant 
 but unhappily short Parliamentary career, excellently laid down, 
 that our armaments ought to be strong for defence, and weak for 
 offence. Such a principle does not suit a pugnacious minister, 
 and will be resisted to the utmost by routine, by military officers 
 and by very powerful secret influence. Nevertheless the times 
 are propitious for a fundamental change. Not only of Mr. 
 GLADSTONE and his most eminent colleagues is the policy most 
 heartily pacific : but the same is equally true of the present 
 Earl of DEBBY, known to us in office as Lord STANLEY. Next, 
 the urgent effort for economy, and the just claim that the 
 National Debt shall be paid off, press in the direction of re-
 
 striding our armaments to the utmost, and cutting down their 
 expense. 
 
 The force which is most offensive to foreigners is our immense 
 war-fleet. They remember our bombardment of Copenhagen 
 without even prior warning and declaration of war. To defend 
 our arsenals, such heavily armoured hulks or monitors as cannot 
 bear rough seas, are efficient beyond every other device, and can 
 never alarm foreign countries. Our fleet on the coast of "West 
 Africa was proved by Sir FOWELL BTTXTON, more than 30 years 
 ago, to make the slave trade more cruel to negroes, without 
 checking it. All reason for that fleet has come to an end. Our 
 Mediterranean fleet is equally an anachronism. To suppress 
 piracy, both in that sea and on the Oceans, we need a, joint action 
 of all maritime powers ; of which each should contribute its 
 quota of ships to an International Board, if not rather to two 
 Boards, one for the Mediterranean, one for the Oceans. The 
 Board and its ships would in fact be Extra-National and essen- 
 tially neutral in every possible war. Russia, Prussia, Austria 
 and Italy, would rejoice to be recognized as maritime. We 
 have no right whatever to a fleet in the Mediterranean except 
 for common benefit. We should finally get rid of that hatred 
 and suspicion, which from nearly all nations rest upon us because 
 of the greatness of our marine and our arrogance in the past. 
 By such cooperation on the sea, we might plant a germ of 
 European Federation, in a Mediterranean Board from which 
 Russia probably would be excluded; we might also provide a 
 high tribunal for international arbitration. At any rate, we 
 should immensely lessen, on the one hand, the expense of our 
 fleet; on the other, the number of those who follow the unna- 
 tural life of sailors.* 
 
 * Although it does not belong to my subject, I cannot refrain from adding, 
 especially since the general movement is towards early liberation of colonies, 
 : that the danger of renewed slave-trade is great, if petty powers, with small 
 population and land to spare, are admitted into diplomatic equality with the 
 greater. Now is the crisis for the powers of Europe and of the two Americas 
 to establish, as laws of the Ocean, great principles, which shall for ever make 
 a slave-trade impossible. Such a development could not be, until Russia and 
 America had liberated their slaves. An Oceanic board is now perhnps a 
 timely growth, and would soon take this important work in hand. On the 
 East Coast of Africa, the slave-trade through Zanzibar is become of late 
 awfully destructive.
 
 34 
 
 To reconcile moral with commercial and imperial interests in 
 the case of sailors is to me the hardest part of my subject. I 
 do not pretend to solve the problem ; I merely point at it, and 
 insist that the smaller our fleets, the smaller the evils. Also, 
 the greater our fleets, and the longer the men have been abroad, 
 so much the greater is the cruelty of allowing sailors, as soon as 
 they land, to be inveigled into taverns where they spend in drink 
 and vice the earnings of months or years ; carrying also back 
 with them abroad that tendency to drunkenness and frays, which 
 makes our nation infamous and has even involved us in war. 
 
 But, for a standing army there is no necessity, no valid reason. 
 Martial law in time of peace, especially such martial law as 
 exists, is a gratuitous mischief, as immoral in its results as it is 
 tyrannical. It is only enacted for one year ; such is the tradi- 
 tional and just jealousy of Parliament. This is a solemn annual 
 protest that it is no accepted system. The ancient institutions 
 of England down to the Revolution did not allow of a standing 
 army, but were much more like to those of Switzerland ; which 
 enable a State, very small in population and poor for its numbers, 
 to keep a formidable defence against invasion from even great 
 Powers ; and this, at a minimum of cost, while eminently sus- 
 taining patriotic feeling. We want no other army, but such a 
 skeleton as may be a normal school to the nation, to organize 
 and drill us, if ever the occasion arise. The only thing needed 
 to be taught beforehand and taught to all, because the art cannot 
 be acquired in a moment, is, the use of the rifle. The less we 
 spend in peace, the stronger we are in war. Old armaments are 
 a positive weakness. In the late American civil war, the South, 
 with all its deficiencies in workshops, workmen, materials and 
 wealth, so armed the Merrimac that no ship in the whole English 
 navy could have withstood her; and the Fingal (or Atalanta) was 
 perhaps still more formidable. The North, beginning with some 
 half dozen ships, blockaded in a few months a coastline of 
 between 2 and 3 thousand miles ; and built, first the Monitor 
 which repelled the Merrimac, next the Weehauken which knocked 
 to pieces the Atalanta. Contrast the English Admiralty. Being 
 accustomed to huge ships, they were unwilling to put on the 
 stocks what was really needed for the war in the Baltic, namely, 
 gun-boats : and built them so late, that the war was over before 
 they were complete. In America, the North and South alike,
 
 35 
 
 with unheard-of speed, organized out of civil population in 
 country and town armies on a scale utterly unknown to us. To 
 keep up in peace armaments fit for war, is an insanity which we 
 ought to leave to despotic powers. 
 
 But, it is said, we are then to be defenceless. No such 
 thing. England under HENBY VIII. and ELIZABETH was not 
 defenceless. Switzerland is not defenceless. Every young man 
 in the kingdom, within certain ages, should be compelled to learn 
 the use of the rifle, or whatever is the most effective arm. A 
 compulsion which is universal, would not be felt as any hardship. 
 It would not have any immoral tendencies, as it has when 
 soldiers are merely the riffraff and scum of society. It would 
 not encourage frivolity or a taste for war : moreover, young 
 men naturally like to be taught a skill of this kind. The public 
 holidays necessary for it would be highly convenient for local 
 political action : but details are not here in place. If ability to 
 shoot preexist, an army, greater than we ever yet had, could be 
 raised at the shortest notice. We want no regimenting, no 
 " volunteers," (an evil institution on several grounds,) no military 
 movements, no uniforms, no martial law, no martinet-tyrannies, 
 but only a temporary dictatorship, limited to secure the com- 
 munity against the misuse of weapons. As soon as it is known 
 abroad that every Englishman can use the rifle, French colonels 
 will for ever leave off to bluster about invasion. On a really 
 great crisis, armies would, as it were, spring out of the soil. 
 Eemember the Hungary of 1848-9 : or rather, the new genera- 
 tion may need to learn the facts. Austria, resolved to crush the 
 liberties of Hungary, (which are as ancient and continuous as 
 those of England,) had carefully put away nearly all the Hun- 
 garian army into Italy, Bohemia and elsewhere : so that only 
 4000 trained troops remained in Hungary, which had few work- 
 shops for arms, and was very backward in all mechanical 
 developments. The Austrian ministry perfidiously stimulated 
 insurrection in Transylvania, Serbia and Croatia, and secretly 
 furnished the insurgents with arms and officers, while publicly 
 disowning and denouncing them. The Eussians occupied Tran- 
 sylvania the very citadel of Hungary, with 20,000 men, and 
 the Austrians with 150,000 invaded Hungary from three sides. 
 Yet Hungary, thus taken by surprize, beat down her insurgents, 
 drove out the Eussians, and defeated the Austrians in seven 
 great battles on the open field in the single month of March,
 
 36 
 
 1849. She wanted nothing but arms, which she could not 
 manufacture fast enough, to defeat the host of nearly 200,000 
 men which Russia proceeded to pour in upon her. But all the 
 European Cabinets conspired, not to acknowledge her " belli- 
 gerence," (even after she had defeated Austria,) and thereby 
 enable her to purchase arms. In consequence, her chief general 
 was driven to unpatriotic despair : his perfidy, and that alone, 
 caused her final defeat. Every European Cabinet knows perfectly 
 what England, once taught to use arms, could and would do, if 
 invaded. No defence of the coast by a fleet will be needful. We 
 shall have no more disgraceful panics, such as that of Russian 
 invasion in 1838, and of French invasion both in 1852 and in the 
 close of 1859. 
 
 Parliamentary hatred of standing armies became intense, 
 after CHARLES I. had attempted to overthrow the laws, and 
 CROMWELL had succeeded in usurping a despotism by his Iron- 
 sides. The guard of CHARLES II. (I think) were called Hack- 
 guards^ and the meaning which the word assumed attests the 
 general sentiment. Vainglorious delight in MARLBORO UGH' s 
 victories may have lessened English hatred of a centralized and 
 armed landforce ; yet the hatred lived in Parliament into the 
 reign of GEORGE II. Perhaps it perished in the blazing military 
 successes of the elder PITT'S administration. Happily at last no 
 Statesmen now dream of entering European conflicts. We 
 fought against Russia our last war, and by its success the 
 freedom of Italy and the union of Germany became possible. 
 Spain, Italy, Hungary, Germany, can now all take care of them- 
 selves ; and in our conduct to Denmark and Poland the nation 
 and Parliament jointly have uttered the verdict, that we are not 
 mighty enough to rescue little States from great ones. What- 
 ever our sympathies and judgments, it is no task for us; and we 
 ought now to be able to go back to old English principles, as 
 under the Tudors. Let a powerful minister announce it, and, I 
 believe, a tumult of applause will ring through all three 
 kingdoms. 
 
 Yet undoubtedly there is a huge mountain of difficulty in 
 the way, in respect to India (to say nothing of Ireland). We 
 have recently conquered India by force, and we keep it undis- 
 guisedly by the strong hand. We no longer trust native troops, 
 nor hold Indian loyalty by delegation from the Great Mogul, 
 whom we treated as a felon for remembering that he was our
 
 37 
 
 suzerain. We now lift aloft upon our tiara the historical badge 
 of " tyranny," by occupying India with a foreign army ; and in 
 case of new insurrection, all the Cabinets in the world, and all 
 the Garibaldians in the world, will sympathize with the in- 
 surgents. If moral principle cannot make us tremble, the fate 
 of Austria while clinging to retain Venice and Lombardy may 
 warn us. But that is a glance forward into the future. As our 
 immediate punishment, we use up, we strictly sacrifice on the altar 
 of Imperialism, some thousands of young men in every year of 
 peace, (ten thousand, it has been said,) to maintain our vast 
 Indian army. Every soldier who reaches Indian soil has cost 
 to the Government, it is said, 100. India is taxed for our 
 military expenses, and pays yearly for her own subjugation: not 
 a very soothing fact for patriots unreconciled to our rule. As 
 for our soldiers, they most reasonably abhor the idea of being 
 shipped off to such a distance, and to a climate where barrack- 
 life under martial law is simply pestilential ; while the fostered 
 vices of the troops make bad worse. Desertion from the army 
 increased prodigiously in 1858, when the soldiers found that 
 they were liable to be sent to India. The difficulty of inducing 
 men to enlist is intensified, at the very time when the Govern- 
 ment wants more of them : and, awful to say ! powerful persons 
 regard this as a justification of entrapping them into the service 
 by making them drunk. The drain on our military population 
 is too great, and makes the idea perfectly ridiculous of depend- 
 ing on a standing army for home defence. Yet, so insane are 
 men of routine, that forgetting the Martello towers built against 
 the first Napoleon, which, it was presently found, could not be 
 garrisoned, the stupidity has been repeated in new fortifications, 
 which are already confessed to be useless. We cannot be safe, 
 until we rest on a righteous basis ; that is, until Indians learn to 
 be proud of the English dynasty, and cast their patriotism into 
 it. Their high admiration of our mechanical developments, 
 their sense how many benefits we can impart by constitutional 
 procedures, by fixed legality and social freedom, give us noble 
 opportunity. It must be confessed, that our introduction of 
 spirit-shops for the sake of revenue has shocked the most intelli- 
 gent classes, who are our most valuable and loyal supporters. 
 How they will be revolted, how they will despise and abhor us, 
 if we adopt a warranted harlotry as a universal English institu- 
 tion, we can but speculate. At this moment England may win
 
 58 
 
 the loyalty of India quickly by one way, and by one only : that 
 is, by faithfully carrying out the Charter of 1833, and the 
 Queen's proclamation made when she assumed the empire. The 
 one assures absolute evenhanded justice and equality between 
 Hindoo and Englishman as regards official appointments ; the 
 other guarantees security to the Princes and neutrality in re- 
 ligion. No one would more rejoice to give to Indians their 
 fullest rights, than the present Prime Minister, who spoke nobly 
 for the Ionian Isles, long before any other official person ; who 
 wrote concerning Naples letters of historical fame, casting diplo- 
 macy to the winds, when sacred morality was concerned ; who 
 also showed his conscientious sense of the solemnity of national 
 pledges, in his very brave and unexpected utterance concerning 
 the extension of the Parliamentary suffrage. But alas ! he is 
 not immortal : his health may fail, as did that of other laborious 
 "Peelites," his near friends. Against the intense resistance of 
 officials, men of routine, men scornful of Asiatics, men clinging 
 to narrow interests, who have hitherto made our high pledges 
 well nigh empty, the ablest Prime Minister can do nothing 
 signal, until there is a loud cry from the nation. Very few of 
 our middle classes know the facts concerning India and Indian 
 policy ; perhaps not many even of the upper classes ; but when 
 once it is clearly understood that the standing army is kept up 
 only for India, plain men will say plainly: "England is not to 
 be sacrificed for India : our brethren, our sons, are not to rot by 
 thousands in time of peace." The moral hatreds of a people, 
 simply uttered, are not ineffective, especially of a people which 
 exercises political suffrage ; and the intense difficulties of our 
 position both in India and in Ireland will weigh with men who 
 measure justice and morality by what they call Expediency. 
 
 For some years we have been running hard in the direction of 
 the French army-system. It cannot possibly be complete, without 
 conscription, The miserable mean substitute of cheating poor men 
 by drunkenness to " take the Queen's shilling," must soon break 
 down. Conscription certainly never will be endured. To trans- 
 plant the system into England so as to obtain French efficiency, is 
 quite impossible : meanwhile, tottering steps in that direction lead 
 us into French immorality; and now, a bold hand has suddenly 
 opened to us a clear vista of the future, French licensed prosti- 
 tution, French social despotism, women turned into shameless 
 animals, and marriage-ties dissolving. Do the ruling classes sup-
 
 pose that the nation is as yet willing to renounce the decencies and 
 sanctities of family life, to replace wives by " sound harlots," or 
 wholly to strip off modesty and legal rights from the women who 
 have been ruined by the wicked heartlessness of men ? 
 
 A topic on which Mr. SIMON touches in his valuable report, 
 cannot quite be omitted here. Early marriage would be conducive 
 to general welfare. Most true. MALTHUS himself would heartily 
 recommend it, under the stipulation that the State should not 
 relieve parents of parental duty, or support able-bodied paupers. 
 But the chief thing that we have to say of a practical kind here, 
 is, that the State must not allow whole classes of people to be 
 artificially kept unmarried, which is injurious to public morals, and 
 also weakens the country. To the State the first matter of 
 importance is to have good citizens ; next, if they are good, to 
 have as many as possible. An able, industrious, self-denying man 
 or woman is always worth having as a citizen, and is a source of 
 national wealth, unless institutions are infamously bad ; and then, 
 the institutions must be mended ; the population must not be 
 shovelled out. To one class of us, the great discouragements of 
 marriage are, silly Fashion and Luxury, injudicious and expensive 
 Food, false principles of Economy, the enormous expense of 
 educating children ; also the expense of House Rent, rising out of 
 the system of huge towns. To another class, the prohibition of 
 building cottages, and the stagnation of rural industry; which 
 increases with the increased area of grazing land. Improvement 
 in these matters is general improvement, and cannot be treated as 
 specific to the present subject. Not so the enforced celibacy of a 
 hundred thousand men, in the army and navy : is not this as bad 
 as a celibate clergy ? But the cure cannot be had by any other 
 method than the natural one of trusting the public defence to the 
 brave hands and hearts of the entire people. 
 
 I have long believed that we need legal processes, to be publicly 
 performed with religious solemnity, for Adoption and Clientship. 
 They would aim primarily at securing children from destitution, 
 and especially girls. Orphan Houses and Foundling Establishments 
 are, to the thing really needed, like what SOLOMON'S Polygamy 
 is to Marriage. But as with Marriage, so here, the strictest and 
 wisest precautions are needed, lest wicked persons abuse the legal 
 power entrusted to them. Hence the subject is too complex and 
 difficult to treat in these pages, and can only be alluded to.
 
 Parliament is too often stupified by overwork and by piles of 
 figurefe. Statistics have been called the raw materials of Science. 
 They are not always even that : yet medical men, who ought to 
 know better, are constantly mistaking them for Science itself. They 
 present to one a tabulated view, and then beg that it may be 
 confuted, if possible : as if a table were, in and by itself, a scientific 
 argument.. Figures often usefully refute, or suggest defect in 
 some theory. Again, where principles are clear and acknow- 
 ledged, where we know what are the relations of cause and effect, 
 and what are all the causes at work, Statistics are of value to show 
 the magnitude of the known elements, as so often in Politics : 
 and if tables are copious enough, they may show how far a change 
 in one element changes another. If we are able to make experiments, 
 where causes are few, are known, and are in our own controul, 
 the Statistics may develop an orderly law ; yet even here, they 
 denote a weak and obscure science, to which they are but a supple- 
 ment ; as in experiments on the resistance of fluids. But when 
 we can only observe, where causes are numerous, many of them 
 unappreciable, many perhaps unsuspected ; and much more, where 
 we are absolutely ignorant, a priori, of any relations at all between 
 the phenomena tabulated, Statistics are generally an ignis fatuus, 
 and the reasoner who thinks he is acting the scientific man, is apt 
 merely to show his excessive folly. The late eminent Professor 
 Dr. WHEWELL declared that the weak point in the English mind 
 is, distrust of broad truths : to this defect he thought Mathematics 
 to be a corrective. The defect shows itself preeminently in the 
 direful exploding of Moral Faith : without which a legislator 
 gropes in the darkness, and falls into calamitous errors, which a 
 youth morally wise would reject. 
 
 [END.] 
 
 ARROWSMITH, PRINTER, QUAY STREET, BRISTOL. 
 
 Unive 
 
 Soi 
 
 L: