men in the ranks, here and on foreign stations, are periodically examined. But male civilians are not under such despotism; and both the Acts are silent about them, as was the Bill.

This may not be marvellous, 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 women 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 deceived,-may condemn the healthy, and fail to detect the unhealthy. What chance then has the surgeon, if women are to be tossed in upon him by the score or the hundred? 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 "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, 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 what thoughtful man would not rather, ten times over, sanction a limited Turkish polygamy?

Polygamy indeed, viewed historically, is a respectable institution. Milton could allude to it in the poetical phrase, "as saint or patriarch used," and wrote an elaborate treatise in its favour. It belonged to an earlier and ruder state of man, while border-war was perpetually cutting short the lives of young men, and unmarried young women could scarcely get protection. It naturally dies away as fast as peace and order are established. It has nothing physiologically vicious, and becomes condemnable only when maintained artificially beyond its own age. But the practices into which England is falling are utterly impure, for they deliberately enthrone the Flesh above the Spirit, by discarding all love and faithfulness. They grow naturally worse with time, and when fostered are the certain ruin of every nation, as is familiarly known in history. We have reached a very dangerous crisis, the era of huge towns and empty country, with

great political centralization, a floating disorganised population, abundant capital eager to trade energetically in vice, much hollowness of religion in political and official men, and an absorption of religious teachers in other tasks than that of teaching morality. We see a senseless luxury increasing, the gentry later in marrying, fine courtezans rising in outward honour, and chastity on the decline among poorer women, who are beset by starvation and by bribes. Add to this, at least one court physician preaches the value of harlots, entirely despairs of moral influences on young men, and regards vice as an inevitable fatality; and at least some medical men audaciously assert that chastity is unhealthful to young men, and prescribe harlotry as a medical remedy. How many thus preach in the dark, it is impossible to learn but the doctrine comes from Paris, where many English students now finish their medical education. If, in such a national stage, Public Law steps in, to facilitate and regulate, as a part of life to be counted on, that sensuality which is condemned by religion, by morality, by conscience, by experience ;—which maintains a body of women bereft of womanhood, some heartsmitten with agony, others callous and misanthropic, but all ever growing up against domestic purity;-a system which, when it once becomes national, is fatal to tenderness of heart and conscience, to industry, and at length to patriotism; what is to become of this people and empire? A widely learned man once asserted, and too nearly with truth,-that a corrupt individual may be regenerated; but a corrupt nation, never. State-patronage of this deadly vice in army and navy pronounces it venial in all men whose position makes marriage difficult, and in married men under very many circumstances. To go wrong on this vital question, may be the last blow of political suicide to our aristocratic and commercial classes. They will leave no hope of purity and safety for this nation, but from utterly democratic plebeianism.

REMEDIES FOR THE GREAT SOCIAL EVIL.

From the Second Part of the Tract of 1869, reprinted 1884 with a few omissions.

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, wise measures may at once reduce and limit the mischief. We can leave off to do evil, while we learn to do well. We may pass laws to punish those whose guilt is primary, and we may suppress 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 in vain 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 and of Building, also restricting the size of towns, are of course among the preventives of this pernicious evil. In general, also, whatever abets roguery, ignorance, and brutality, abets also cruel unchastity.

I. 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 the legislators either fear to be legislating against their own sons, or are conscious of personal guilt: else why, for six hundred 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 men 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 * A Bill further to extend legislation that undertakes to provide "Safe Harlots" for profligate men.

legal power to give themselves away into marriage. Surely then they have (or ought to 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 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 ought to 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 may love the other and desire marriage, the man is imprisoned for contempt of Court, and cannot escape punishment by claiming to marry the lady, nor yet 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 own consent. She has no right to give consent; his act therefore has 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 saying that the young woman had been previously 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 girl makes a trade of herself, and he can prove it, he is no Seducer. Anything short of this is irrelevant, and the judge ought to forbid the man's counsel from aspersing her. If she have fallen once, that does not justify the culprit in seducing her to a second offence. While she makes effort to conceal her shame, the law must presume that she is trying to keep in an honourable course. To entice 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 fairly 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 throws on the