The advocates of State-regulated fornication contend that diseases due to vice will be best checked by licensed prostitution, combined with medical care. The Abolitionists hold that morality alone is sufficient, and that vice is not necessary. It is a square issue; shall it be immorality and medicine, or shall it be morality?

The Regulationists believe that vice is necessary; the Abolitionists believe that vice is not necessary, and that virtue must be demanded. A memorial signed by one hundred and twenty-three British women, of whom over half belong to the titled aristocracy, presented to the British Government April 24, 1897, declares:—

“We feel it is the duty of the State, which of necessity, collects together large numbers of unmarried men in military service, to protect them from the consequences of evils which are, in fact, unavoidable.”

A memorial, on the other hand, of sixty-one thousand four hundred and thirty-seven British women, and presented to the Government July 31, 1897, asserts:—

“No permanent diminution of disease will ever be attained by measures which do not strike primarily at the vice itself.”

The leader of the sixty-one thousand and more, Mrs. Josephine Butler, answers to the statement of the one hundred and twenty-three: “The confidence of ultimate victory based on a foundation which cannot be shaken, enables us to regard with composure the forward advance and claims of materialism and fleshly indulgence, and to compassionate those—furious against us to-day—who will be beaten to-morrow, and who will be forced, before the ‘great cloud of witnesses’ in heaven and earth, to confess themselves defeated and deserving of defeat.”

The cause of venereal disease is promiscuous relations carried to excess. The hope of eradicating such disease, then, by licensing its cause, betokens the extreme of moral blindness, and contradicts all science. Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell says: “We may as well expect to cure typhoid fever whilst allowing sewer gas to permeate the house; or cholera, whilst bad drinking water is being taken, as try to cure venereal disease whilst its cause remains unchecked.”

A recent official plea for licensed prostitution in the Cantonments of India declares: “The efforts to teach the soldiers habits of self-control” have “signally failed.” We wish for a moment to consider the efforts that have been used in the past. There lies before us a copy of the “Report of the Army Health Association.” It was printed at Meerut, India, in 1892. We have also the subsequent reports for several years. In speaking of the efforts put forth to teach self-control, much is made of the work of this Association (see Departmental Committee Report, 1897, page 13), as a means that has been used. This report of the Army Health Association has printed on its cover such texts as, “Keep thyself pure,” “He that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption,” etc.; giving the impression that it is a religious document. In fact it is interspersed all through with Scripture quotations.

The introduction is signed by a Major-General, and the body of the report is written by an army chaplain, secretary to the Association, who has the title of Bachelor of Divinity. Four reverends beside, army chaplains, are named among the list of officers of the Association. The language employed in the report is often very obscure, and needs close analysis to get at its real meaning. The introduction is a plea for the re-establishment of the abolished system of Regulation, and is little more than the expression of a desire to have legal sanction for what they were already doing illegally, as the report shows, and it is doubtless for this very reason that the language is so obscure. In one place it speaks of the “Gospel duty of healing diseases in a compulsory way,” and as a precedent refers to the “Gospel record of healing even when a voice had come from the healed protesting against the cure.” Certainly blasphemy could scarcely go further than to liken the compulsory indecent exposure of a woman to a miracle of our Lord. Every soldier should “do his best,” says the report, “by the blessing of Almighty God, to resist all temptation leading to the evil.” Close inspection proves that in this case “the evil” in the mind of the writer is not the vice but the disease. The soldier is recommended to the task of attaining to “self-command on pass,” i.e., when outside the region of licensed brothels.

The report states that a “Handbook” has been circulated “to all fresh arrivals in India,” and the closing chapter of the report is a reprint of that Handbook, which is especially designed for army chaplains to circulate among the soldiers as a “religious” tract. Interspersed with the quotations of Scripture texts, is abominable instruction to the effect that a young man who will confine his visits to the Government licensed brothel can trust the Lord to keep him from contracting disease. This “religious” tract promises to keep infected women out of the chakla, and warns the soldier not to go “in an underhand way” to houses where he will not be protected from “disease.”

O mothers! can you conceive of what would be your feeling to discover that your eighteen-year-old boy, as is the son of many an English mother, was under such “gospel” instruction as this! “We shall never forget what we owe to Lord Roberts,” says the report; and we might have anticipated that the author of the “Infamous Memorandum” would likewise be the supporter of such measures for the instruction of young soldiers. Sir George White, who succeeded Lord Roberts as Commander of the Indian forces, said, in the Viceregal Council held in India, July 8, 1897, that “Every effort should also be made to warn young soldiers of the consequences of immorality in this country, to point out to them the terrible risks which they run, and to appeal to their higher moral instincts and to their pride in their manhood to avoid connections that carry with them grave danger that they will return home shattered wrecks, unfit alike for military duty or civil life.”

There is not one word here as though evil connections were likewise to be avoided, even if they were not supposed to carry danger of physical disease as a result. The “moral” teaching seems to have been all of that immoral sort that points toward the Government house of shame rather than to the seventh commandment. How many young soldiers may not have met their first temptation by having a superior officer point them to the Government-regulated chakla! Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell says truly: “The first indispensable condition in the prevention of disease is the steady discouragement of promiscuous intercourse. Now I assert positively that such discouragement has never been seriously tried in the army, by Government, but only by unofficial efforts—efforts which are most valuable, but entirely lacking in the force of organization, and in the important recognition and help which Government alone can afford.”

It is easy to assume that the compulsory periodical examination of women will check diseases due to vice; but the assumption has never been proved. The statistics of the years during which the C.D. Acts prevailed in certain military stations in Great Britain, as compared with the statistics of later years, show a marked decrease since repeal took place, and therefore that the compulsory examinations in no way diminished disease, but rather the contrary. And when an unbiased person thoroughly investigates the history of the controversy on the subject, and is made acquainted with the course of deceit which has been practised in the past by Anglo-Indian[6] advocates of licensed vice, in order to maintain an odious system, a belief in Indian military assertions will not be inspired. The statement is being heralded to the world that over half the British army in India is suffering from diseases due to vice. Yet Lord George Hamilton, Secretary of State for India, was obliged to explain in the House of Commons, January 25, 1897, that while it had been reported that the aggregate of admissions to hospital for venereal diseases among the British troops in India amounted in 1895 to 522 per thousand, “This does not mean that 522 men per thousand were separately and individually admitted, still less does it indicate that 522 soldiers per thousand are incapacitated for duty from this cause. It is calculated on the latest returns that an average permanent reduction of 46 per thousand is the loss entailed by these diseases.” In other words, instead of over half being incapacitated from military duty, less than one in twenty is off duty from this cause mentioned. The larger number, which is calculated to startle the public into submission to the demands of certain Anglo-Indian officials, has been secured on the assumption that every “admission” into hospital means a fresh case, whereas it has been conceded that all re-admissions from relapse, and every stage of the progress of disease which requires a new diagnosis, has been reckoned as an “admission.” A Member of Parliament who has been enquiring about the hospital records, says:

“I have before me the hospital sheet of a man who was in hospital from January 1st to January 25th in one year. During that time the medical description of his disease was changed four times, and the man is formally entered and discharged and re-admitted on each of these occasions, the date of each discharge and admission being entered in the column provided for the purpose. So that this one man, who has been only once in hospital during the year, actually furnishes four ‘admissions’ to the official record. The same man was again in hospital from the 1st to the 30th of May, in the following year, during which time the diagnosis being three times changed, he was entered as admitted and discharged three times.”

Statistics compiled on this basis are absolutely worthless for the purposes of argument, and indicate, when so used, a lack of conscience as to exact truthfulness. The official figures of the Indian Army (included in the Report of the Departmental Committee of 1897, strongly advocating a return to licensed prostitution), lie before us. It cannot be said that such a report would be likely to minimize the amount of disease, yet this report, on page 9, distinctly states: “In 1895 an average of 45 men per thousand, or 3,200 in a force of 71,031 British soldiers in India, were constantly in hospital for venereal diseases.” Certainly this is sufficiently conclusive. The statement is heralded to the world that all England is becoming infected from the troops of diseased soldiers who return yearly to the home-land. One advocate of licensed prostitution in India says that “thirteen per cent.” of the British soldiers are “annually invalided home hopelessly incurable for military purposes.” But referring to the same official statistics, embodied in the Departmental Committee’s Report, we find that from the year 1887 to the year 1895, 681 men out of the force of 70,000 and more, were invalided home from these diseases, or, on an average, 76 men annually out of the whole force of 70,000; that is, one-ninth of one per cent. Such unworthy attempts to frighten an unwilling Christian public into acceding to the return to a system of licensed prostitution, cannot be too strongly condemned. Many well-meaning persons, on the assumption that “figures will not lie,” are repeating these exaggerated assertions, and will not take the trouble of investigating for themselves. The Army Sanitary Commission testified in 1894 that “a compulsory Lock Hospital system in India has proved a failure.” There could be no higher authority to quote; and the attempt to check diseases of this sort by the compulsory Lock Hospital system had then been carried on for the good part of a century in India. If the case could not be proved by such a prolonged experiment, involving such injustice to women, surely all honest people should be ready to favour its abandonment.

But it is proposed now in certain quarters to examine men as well as women. Two wrongs do not make a right. Equality of degradation is not the sort of equality for Christians to desire. Bring the test home. Could the reader, without committing sin, go to a physician to be examined in order to discover whether he or she is “fit” to practise fornication? Then the State that requires such an act becomes guilty in the sight of God of committing the act. The guilt of that which is done under actual compulsion rests wholly upon the State or individual that thus enforces wrong-doing. The one who advocates the compulsory examination of women stands guilty before God as the perpetrator of the outrage. It is a fearful thing when the State becomes the perpetrator of such sin. We know it is argued that the women and men subjected to such regulations would be only those who are willing to submit. We will dwell on that point a little further on; at present it is enough to say, that because a thief is willing to steal, the State is no less guilty that obliges him to steal.

Certain women are, it seems, being deceived by the pretence that laws are to be passed which will compel men to attend the periodical examination. What is the use of women clamouring for such a law as long as men enact and enforce all our laws? Men will never legislate themselves into the degradations and inconveniences of the compulsory periodical examination, and go to reside in hospitals as long as they are afflicted with disease. Will the Cantonment magistrate leave his judicial bench to go and sit in the Lock Hospital idly until he is no longer a source of danger to the community? Will the colonel of a regiment leave his soldiers to mutiny while he goes to reside in a Lock Hospital for a term of weeks? Such talk is the merest nonsense until only men of good morals control military affairs, and if they did there would be small demand for Lock Hospitals in India. The young soldiers could be readily trained to decency were it not for the utterly dishonouring views of life held by most of the high-titled officials over them. On this very proposal to examine men, the Secretary for War, Lord Lansdowne, said in the House of Lords, in the debate that took place May 17, 1897: “I have discussed that proposal with many high authorities, and I am bound to tell your lordships that the conclusion to which I am disposed to arrive is that this practice of regular inspection did not produce the desired effect; and that it was, on the contrary, regarded, and rightly regarded, by the men as a brutalizing and degrading practice.” It has therefore been boldly determined and declared that men shall not be subjected to periodical examination (although there is not the faintest possibility of their ever being subjected to this humiliation by physicians of the opposite sex), for it is “brutalizing and degrading.”[7] Yet it is these very men who are directly responsible for bringing disease back to England; for the native women do not go to England. The argument is, that since it brutalizes and degrades men to cause them to be examined, that they may not propagate disease in England, therefore the native women of India must be brutalized and degraded. It is useless to assert that the practice will not degrade women; we know that the moral nature of a woman is at least as susceptible of being injured by enforced immodesty as that of a man; in fact, as soon as it would serve any purpose in making a point in the interest of self, these very men would boldly proclaim, probably, the greater moral susceptibility of woman. It seems the extreme of servility for women to come to the front at this time, and in the face of the utter repudiation of all intention of examining men, declare for the examination of women. When men will not yield their dignity one jot, even for the sake of preserving the health of those women of England who are to become their future wives, what insolent hypocrisy for them to persuade deluded women to help them to bring women under practices so “degrading and brutalizing!” What infinite capacity of servility in the nature of women who will advocate such degrading, brutalizing treatment of women!

But, we may be asked, Shall women show no concern for the “innocent wives and children” of diseased men? Again we ask, Which wives and which children—the British or the Indian? There are hundreds of such wives and children who have been forsaken by husbands and fathers. There is almost a nation of Eurasians who curse the day they were given an unwelcome existence. And their mothers, in large numbers, were honestly married, to their best belief and intention. Here are the real wives and the real children in the sight of a just God, and to them should England’s attention be first turned. The chaklas hold many such unwilling prisoners, left there by treacherous husbands and fathers. Some day this wife of the officer or soldier will be turned out to perish of the disease her system could no longer throw off, and the children will either be retained as soldiers’ prostitutes or sent out to share the fate of the diseased mother. The women of England are being besought to turn their eyes on the future wives of British officers and soldiers; it would be for England’s lasting good would they but persistently keep their eyes on the British officers’ and soldiers’ present wives and children in the far-off East. Were attention more persistently called to the Indian wife of the British soldier, there would be much less likelihood of his finding opportunity to entrap an innocent wife in the home-land.

It was suggested, in the first instance, by Sir George White, successor to Lord Roberts as Commander-in-Chief of the forces in India, and re-incorporated in the despatch of the Secretary of State as to immediate steps to be taken to check venereal disease, that female medical assistants be employed to conduct the examinations. It is our belief that respectable women-physicians wish to treat disease—not prostitution. Even if such were given the full control of Lock Hospitals, which is not likely, we wonder how many would like to return to their own country bearing certificates for faithful service, such as Mahaldarni Ezergee of the Cantonment of Rawal Pindi displayed to us with such evident pride, that she had been trained in other besides the ordinary duties of a mahaldarni: “The soldiers were remarkably healthy while the prostitutes were under her charge.” Again, another officer had testified: “Few soldiers were in the hospital while the women were under her care.” The surgeon of the regiment had testified: “Disease has been reduced to a minimum among the soldiers,” while the women were under Ezergee, “superintendent of the prostitutes.” This is what Lady Cook describes in a recent American periodical as “ministrations to women,” while the certificates show that everything that was done was valued only as it protected the soldiers in vice; the indications as to the health of the women are never once even commented upon—all the work for women was done with reference to men. This being the fact, it is no wonder that in the official reply from India, dated May 18, 1897, and signed by the Viceroy, Sir George White, and others, it is declared that “It is doubtful whether the women possessing the necessary medical qualifications, and of a status sufficiently good to preclude the possibility of their receiving bribes from the women they have to examine, would be willing to undertake the work.”[8]

As regards the examination of the women, we take a chapter out of the history of our India work, in illustration, as recorded in our Journal:

Meerut, India, February 8, 1892.

At half-past seven this morning we went down the Sudder Bazaar to the neighbourhood of the Lock Hospital, it being examination day. The building is well placed for observation, being at a point where five streets meet, and several other streets run close by. The hospital is a foreign bungalow with a verandah in front, inclosed in a high brick wall. Already the girls, in gaudy apparel and flashy jewelry, were assembling, and in a few moments we counted thirty girls standing or sitting around, outside the building and outside the gate in the street. They came walking and riding in ekkas (native carts), and two loads came in cabs. Some of them had several miles to come from the Rest Camp. The vehicles waited for them across the street, under the shade trees. The girls went in by twos or threes, as summoned. A tall native policeman stood about, apparently to keep order. The street was one of Meerut’s busiest thoroughfares. Men and boys lounged here and there, and even tiny children looked on with interest and curiosity. At one time we noticed not less than twenty-five men and boys gathered about and discussing the scene. A police station was close by, and an unusual number of men lingered in front of it, discussing the women, as their glances and manners indicated. One Eurasian woman brought a girl, evidently held as a slave to make money for her; she seemed reluctant to even trust her girl to go alone into the hospital, when her turn came; and as soon as she emerged again, seized her and led her away, the policemen shouting after her in derision, “Mem Sahib! Mem Sahib!” (the name for “lady,” applied, as a rule, to white women), to which the Eurasian gave no response.

About a hundred women were examined that morning, waiting their turn on the public street, while the crowd gathered round to discuss the women kept by the Government for British soldiers. No wonder the Commander-in-Chief has decided that the female medical assistants who could be induced to manage such an affair would hardly be “sufficiently good to preclude the possibility of their receiving bribes.” The Lock Hospitals of the Orient, as we studied them in many Cantonments of India, and also in Singapore and Hong Kong, are for the treatment of prostitution rather than for the treatment of disease, for the reason that only those who could be quickly restored to health to go on in their occupation are likely to be retained any length of time for treatment. We have already referred to the practice of turning cases of secondary, or advanced, disease out of the Cantonment. The position at the head of one of these hospitals is not likely to tax one’s scientific resources much beyond instructing the native women how to perform ablutions, so strongly urged by Lord Roberts in his Circular Memorandum, in administering douches, and in diagnosticating and keeping in hospital all cases of catamenia. We do not marvel if male surgeons have grown tired of the monotonous round, and with a seeming burst of generosity propose to give the position to medical women; particularly, if by such “generous” expressions of appreciation for the usefulness of women, they can lead over-credulous fine ladies into the conclusion that at last all the objections to the C.D. Acts have been met.

In spite of holding a degrading position the verdict of the world is “A man’s a man for a’ that”; but not so the woman who connects herself with an Eastern Lock Hospital—her dignity would never sustain the shock. Already the official conclusion is that no woman of intelligence or honesty would accept such a position. Women cannot afford to become the scavengers of the profession. We remember interviewing an Englishwoman in charge of a very large Lock Hospital in an Eastern city; and after this we went directly to the adjoining general hospital. We were welcomed by the nurses and treated most cordially until we mentioned, with design, the Englishwoman at the neighbouring hospital, and that we had been talking with her. A frozen response abruptly ended further sociability, and we learned thus that even underling nurses of other hospitals held themselves as in a position to snub the chief superintendent of a Lock Hospital in the East.

From the time that the abominable nature of the Contagious Diseases Acts of England and India were made known, and the Acts held up to public execration and outlawed, like a condemned criminal, this System has gone seeking a new alias that its identity might be hidden from the inconvenience of exposure. Many times these laws have been unmasked, and they have never been able to survive the exposure of their real name, which was at the first, “Contagious Diseases Acts.”

Over and over again has this criminal Law, when caught sneaking about, denied his real name. Like a fatal birthmark, which no power can eradicate, so this abomination has its birthmark, which, when seen, fixes the identity beyond all question. That birthmark is the compulsory examination of women. This cannot be made to serve the desired purpose without all the essential features of the C.D. Acts. It makes not the slightest difference whether the law is called the Health Act, as in Australia, Getz’s Projet de Loi, as in Norway, the Women’s and Girls’ Protection Ordinance, as at Singapore, the Cantonment Acts or the Cantonments Act, or what not—the test of the law, as to its identity with the old infamous C.D. Acts, is, whether women are obliged to submit to compulsory examination. “In fact, the compulsory examination of women is the C.D. Acts.” Let this one point be put into law, and all the rest goes without saying. The battle has always raged around this one central point.

To prove that the compulsory examination of women necessitates the regulations that always attend it, let us suppose that in a community this one point is provided for by law, and that the officers of the law are left to enforce the measure, by whatever regulations are necessary:—

The law demands merely that impure women must be examined regularly for the protection of the public health.

But the police officer sees at once that to secure this point a list must be kept of the women, when examined, that notice of requirement can be sent to those not coming voluntarily. Thus registration of prostitutes comes to pass.

But after examination, those found diseased must be placed by themselves for treatment. Thus a hospital for prostitutes is established.

Then provision must be made to compel those who are unwilling to attend the examinations to do so, for it has been the invariable experience that few women will go regularly for examination unless compelled to do so, and also there must be means of enforcing them to remain in hospital. Thus the hospital becomes a Lock Hospital, and fines and imprisonments are imposed on delinquents.

But compulsion cannot be secured without the aid of the police and the magistrate, and it is most difficult to follow up women, prove their identity, hale them to examination and to Lock Hospital without being able to keep them located in one tolerated quarter or house where they may be found—hence segregation is introduced; and this is also done to keep women with whom association is supposed to be safe—because under constant medical and police surveillance—separate from those with whom it is supposed to be a risk to associate.

Now we discover that the compulsory periodical examination of women of impure life, when carried out in actual operation, creates a necessity for all the essential features of every C.D. Act that has ever been known, namely: Compulsory examination; Registration; Lock Hospitals; Fines and Imprisonments; Police Surveillance; Segregation.

Yet another thing is needful for the operation of this law requiring compulsory periodical examination, namely, measures for extending the operation of the law, so that, as new women are likely to become a source of contamination, they also may be brought under its operation, and for the practical and easy operation of the measure, compelled to take up their residence in segregated quarters. This is the special field of activity in the operation of the law, and is a deadly menace to the most ordinary liberties of women. People will loudly advocate that “something must be done” to confine the houses of ill-fame to certain quarters of a city, without the slightest care as to how it is done, so long as they need not become intimately acquainted with a disagreeable subject; they will advocate measures of the most deadly consequences to others more defenceless than themselves, and to the ultimate moral tone of the very society in which they move, and yet heartlessly refuse to consider the responsibility that rests upon them for their conduct. “Something must be done,” they say, and the police force must attend to the details; they are too loathsome even to be considered, yet they refuse to understand that these very loathsome details which they require the police to work out must utterly ruin the character of the police into whose hands they have betrayed all the decent rights of womanhood.

What does it mean to women for men to assume the right to arrest all suspicious characters and oblige them to live in a certain house or street, and to appear at the examinations at the Lock Hospitals? Let the banker sitting in his bank, or the merchant in his shop, consider what it would mean for him to be accosted in his own place of business, taken off immediately to the Lock Hospital, examined, and if the doctor so ordered, sent immediately into exile in a hospital for libertines, with no chance to set his house in order or to defend his character from the charge of being a libertine! And even if the charge were true would he not think the punishment too severe? And then, suppose it were the case that, at the end of the imprisonment in the hospital, he were required to reside for the rest of his days in a certain street? This is exactly what is done with women when once the principle is set up that compulsory periodical examinations must take place. But the reply is, No women of property or consequence would ever be so treated. Very true; yet are not these often utterly profligate? Certainly. So this is a law which will be operated only in the case of the lowly. Yes, it is a piece of legislation on the part of the mighty to degrade and rob the daughters of the poor of their most ordinary rights, and it deserves the most extreme execration that human language is capable of, on that very account. The day has passed by when it is safe to try to enunciate such sentiments among a free people. “What are the women making all this row about?” said one of the daily journals of London, during our India work; “no high-born ladies will ever be put to inconvenience by such a law.” Ah! that was one of the principal reasons why such a row was made.

What does it mean to arrest a suspected case and send her to the segregated quarter for residence, where any man can assume the right to insult her and demand entrance at her door at any hour? It means that the law takes hold of a woman who may have occasionally done wrong and forces her to do wrong habitually; for after segregation no one will give her honest work. That law is radically wicked which confirms a human being into a habitual breaker of one of God’s ten commandments.

And supposing the girl has not actually done wrong, but has conducted herself imprudently, and brought just suspicion on herself? To put her under the ban of such a law means to create a prostitute by law. That law is radically wrong which can be operated with such deadly effect on society as to actually create evil. Yet everywhere that the C.D. Acts have been operated such cases have occurred. The mayor of a city in South Africa told us that when a proposition for the introduction of these regulations was being entertained by the City Council of that place, and every effort was made to secure his approval, he was one day accosted by an alderman on the street, who plucked him by the sleeve, and pointing out a perfectly respectable-looking woman who was passing by, said, “Now, if we could get our law we could get that woman.” He started back in horror, thinking to himself, “And if he could get his clutches on that woman by such a law, why not on any woman?”

Policemen are not supposed to be infallibly virtuous; and supposing they could be bribed or blackmailed? A policeman in Queensland confessed that he had taken a bribe to deliver a pretty girl over to the power of a libertine by having her registered as a common prostitute, and that he carried out the dastardly crime. A Christian woman in Cape Colony heard of the arrest as a common prostitute of a virtuous girl of her acquaintance, and went to the court to secure her release. There was a keeper of a house of ill-fame whom she recognised, who came to make accusation against the girl. The Christian worker appealed to a policeman, whom she knew as a church-member and a man of good repute, to stand with her for the girl’s defence; but the evil woman took him to one side and she distinctly overheard her threaten to blast his reputation if he interfered. The magistrate took the word of this evil woman, which was corroborated by the falsehoods of the policeman, and in spite of her protestations, the girl was registered.

Another case was told us by a Wesleyan minister’s wife; it occurred in England, before the repeal of the Acts. Her most intimate early friend, a lovely young Christian girl, had a brother who quarrelled with a policeman who threatened revenge. He watched his opportunity, arrested the sister, and gave his oath that she was a common prostitute; she was forced through the examination and registered, and when at last found by her brother, was a raving maniac as a result of the day’s awful experience, and died shortly afterward in a madhouse. We might multiply the instances we have ourselves personally heard on good authority, and relate some of the many cases known to the history of the movement for repeal, but there is no space for further enlargement.

Again we say there is something radically wrong with this law, when women can be so fearfully wronged in its operation, should the police officers and magistrates be either wicked or weak. Practically such a law delivers the reputation of women wholly over to the power of the police. But, some one says, let no case be settled on suspicion; let proof be brought. The question arises, How secure the proof? In India it was considered sufficient by Lord Roberts to teach the soldiers that it was “a point of honour” to save other soldiers from disease by informing against women; but it has frequently been observed that the soldier will usually point out another woman rather than the one he has actually associated with, and women are haled to the examinations who may never have seen the informant before. It detracts nothing from the peril of girls and women when the uncorroborated testimony of a self-confessed libertine can be used against them, and the frequency with which evil men will combine to utterly break down the testimony of a young woman in case of seduction, and the unblushing testimony of these men to their own shameful conduct, which is often treated as a joke by the magistrate, shows that the reputation of a woman is no safer in the hands of a combination of libertines. Nothing is much more difficult than to actually prove a woman a prostitute, and short of absolute proof, the thought of registration, segregation, imprisonment in a Lock Hospital, etc., is intolerable.

Again, a single act of fornication does not prove prostitution, and how many acts shall constitute proof? Practically, these are things that the law never has considered at all; but wherever the compulsory examination has been established, secret information from libertines is received and acted upon with little question as to its veracity, and the whole system has immediately degenerated into a costly effort on the part of the State, paid for by the taxes of respectable people, to pander to the wishes of libertines, and keep the houses of ill-fame filled with attractive and healthy inmates, and thus the State becomes itself the great purveyor of vice. We have said before repeatedly, and say again, that there is no real evidence that prostitution has been made safer by the periodical examination of women, because the false security in vice greatly increases the amount of vice, which is itself the cause of the diseases in question. Not only does correct reason testify to this, but also statistics uphold this statement.

We have now shown that the compulsory examination of women brings into existence, of necessity, every feature of what is commonly called the C.D. Acts; and that, as that compulsory examination is of itself a sin, so every feature of the enactments necessary to carry out that law is at each step liable to fearful abuse, and the system as a whole is ruinous to the morals of any community.

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