LETTER TO LORD GEORGE HAMILTON.

The following is the full text of the letter of retractation which Lady Henry Somerset addressed to Lord George Hamilton, January 27, as it appeared in the London daily papers of February 8, 1898:—

Eastnor Castle, Ledbury, Jan. 27, 1898.

Dear Lord George Hamilton,—Your lordship invited me ten months ago to give you my view of the dispatch that has been addressed to the Government of India on the health of the army, and in a letter in which I did so I ventured to suggest some methods, moral and disciplinary, which seemed to me the only ones likely to succeed, because they had at least the merit of being logical.

I was led to do so by two considerations: first, the dispatch in question seemed to imply that the Government would give every encouragement to every form of elevating agency, and so emphasize the altered spirit in which the subject was approached, and that such suggested supervision would only affect an incorrigible minimum; and second, that the system I had in mind would be so drastic and penal in its nature as to make State interference odious and finally impossible. That was ten months ago; and in that time nothing has been done of which the public has heard to strengthen the forces that make for moral improvement.

What has been done, viz., the repeal of the Indian Acts of 1895, which prohibited inspection, has been in a direction exactly opposite. It seems to have been the object of the Government to obtain the maximum of impunity, with the minimum of protest, from those who desire to see the State shape its actions according to Christian views of ethics. I need not tell your lordship I am not writing to say how strongly I am still opposed to the course which the Government has taken; but I find that my letter to your lordship of last year has been taken by many to mean that I am on the side of the accepted view of State regulation, and I am from time to time quoted as a sympathizer with such views. I am therefore writing to withdraw any proposals made in that letter for this reason—that the events of the past year have convinced me of the inadvisability and extreme danger of the system that in April last I thought might be instituted.

The absence of any serious effort by the Government to bring about a higher standard in the army is a final proof to me that, as long as regulation of any kind can be resorted to as a remedy, it will always be regarded as the one and only panacea. My view was that it would be instituted as an odious but possibly effective auxiliary to moral efforts. I find it will always be accepted as a convenient substitute. I take the liberty of addressing this explicit withdrawal of an endorsement in whatever form of the principle of regulation; because it was in a letter to your lordship that I originally incurred the responsibility. I trust, therefore, to your lordship’s indulgence to forgive me for troubling you further in the matter.—I remain, my lord, yours very truly,

(Signed)Isabel Somerset.

The following comments on the above letter appeared in The Christian (London), February 17, 1898:

REGULATION NO REMEDY.

In our last issue we inserted in full the letter of Lady Henry Somerset, in which she withdrew from her unfortunate position in relation to the State regulation of vice in India. We refrained, for the time being, from comment, that her retractation might speak for itself. We feel, therefore, the more free to remark upon it now.

We rejoice, in the first place, that it has come at all, for it justifies the principles for which we and other repealers have contended all these years. Lady Henry is convinced of “the inadvisability and extreme danger” of her former proposals, and recognises now that “as long as regulation of any kind can be resorted to as a remedy, it will be regarded as the one and only panacea … [and] will always be accepted as a convenient substitute [for moral reform].”

It is therefore with thankfulness that we note her ladyship’s “explicit withdrawal of an endorsement in whatever form of the principle of regulation.”

This is all good so far as it goes, but it does not go far enough; and, alas! it comes too late, for it can never undo the fearful harm her action last year was the means of doing.

A public retractation is a hard and painful process, and we sympathize with Lady Henry in the mental strain which it must have cost her. But she has not been the only sufferer. It were no small thing to cause division and discord in so gigantic an organization as that over which she presided, so that at the present time the movement is crippled and its machinery out of gear. This might well have elicited an expression of regret, which we hope may yet be forthcoming in some communication to the Association she has so grievously wronged.

But more than this. Encouraged by her act, the Government claimed the women of England as its supporters, defied moral sentiment, and, on the crest of the wave of this unhappy dissension, carried the re-enactment of the infamous C.D. Acts among our sisters in India. It will take long and weary years of uphill work to undo the mischief that her ill-advised and hasty action wrought. Meantime, how many Indian women will have succumbed to a shameful life and gone down to a dishonoured grave?

The weakest point of Lady Henry’s letter is the erroneous assumption on which it is based: that her proposals themselves were moral, and that if the Government had instituted reforms they might have successfully co-existed with regulation. But how can regulation under any circumstances be a remedy? The very terms are self-contradictory. What is morally wrong can never be experimentally right, and this proposition neither casuistry nor expediency can set aside. The only remedy is obedience to the law of God; and if material aids be needed, let them be found in some active measures for the mental, moral, and spiritual improvement of our soldiers in their leisure hours. This is where reform is needed.

The foregoing Letter, together with the article from The Christian, were printed in full in The Shield (the official organ of the British Committee of the Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice) of March, 1898, with the following

NOTE BY THE EDITOR.

“We are glad to see that Lady Henry Somerset has now withdrawn from the proposals for the Regulation of Vice with which her name has become connected. At the same time we regret that she still appears to think that her scheme could possibly have done good if side by side with it had been some moralizing agency. Our position is and has uniformly been that Regulation is essentially under all circumstances a demoralizing agency, and must be so from the very nature of the case; and that the provision of women certified fit for immoral purposes is necessarily disastrous whatever be the concomitants of such a proposition.”