We now come to the period when Josephine Butler began the great work of her life, the crusade against the State regulation of vice. This system had its rise in France, being brought into operation in Paris by Napoleon on the eve of the establishment of the French Empire in 1802. Other continental countries followed the example of France, and several attempts were made to introduce the system into England, but without success until 1864, when a temporary Act was passed “for the prevention of contagious diseases at certain naval and military stations.” This Act was renewed in 1866, and was further extended (to eighteen towns) in 1869. In other countries the system was “suffered to crouch away in the mysterious recesses of irresponsible police regulations.” England was the only country which had “had the courage or the audacity to launch the system in all its essential details in the form a public statute.”5 This, which at first seemed a triumph for regulationists, proved the very reverse, since the publicity thus given to the matter was the starting-point of a fierce opposition begun in England, and afterwards spreading to the Continent, until it undermined the very foundations of the system. It is not indeed yet destroyed in continental countries, for it is hard to pull down structures which have stood firm for a century, but it is everywhere discredited; and this has come about chiefly through the heroic labours of Josephine Butler and her fellow-workers. In one of her early speeches she tells of her first call to this work.

I first became acquainted with this system as it existed in Paris. I was one of those persons—they were few, I believe—who read that very brief debate in the House of Commons in 1866, when Mr. Henley and Mr. Ayrton alone, but clearly and boldly, entered their protest. It was in that year that the knowledge first broke upon me that this system, which I had so long regarded with horror, had actually found a footing in our England. It seemed to me as if a dark cloud were hanging on the horizon, threatening our land. The depression which took possession of my mind was overwhelming. A few days ago I found a record of those days in an old manuscript book long laid aside. In turning over its leaves I found a note of that debate in the House, the date, and a written expression, which I had since forgotten, of a presentiment which at that time filled my mind, that in some way or other I should be called to meet this evil thing face to face—a trembling presentiment, which I could not escape from, that, do what I would, I myself must enter into this cloud. I find there recorded also a brief prayer, beseeching that if I must descend into darkness, that divine hand, whose touch is health and strength, would hold mine fast in the darkness. I can recollect going out into the garden, hoping that the sight of the flowers and blue sky might banish the mental pain; but it clung too fast for a time for any outward impression to remove it, and I envied the sparrows upon the garden walk because they had not minds and souls capable of torment like mine. But now, when I look back, I see that the prayer has been heard, the divine hand has held mine, often when I knew it not. And, friends, God can give more than power to bear the pain; there is a positive joy in His service, and in any warfare in which He, who conquered sin and death and hell, goes before us, and is our re reward.

Before the Act of 1869 was passed, Daniel Cooper, Secretary of the Rescue Society, aided by a few friends, took active steps to protest against these laws; but, as he afterwards wrote, he “felt an almost utter despair in seeing that, after putting forth our pamphlet and writing thousands of letters imploring our legislators, clergy, principal public men and philanthropists to look into the question, such a stoical indifference remained. We felt, on hearing of your Association, that Providence had well chosen the means for the defeat of these wicked Acts. The ladies of England will save the country from this fearful curse, for I fully believe that through them it has even now had its death-blow.” Dr. Worth and Dr. Bell Taylor of Nottingham also raised their voice against the system early in 1869, and they, with the Rev. Dr. Hooppell and Francis Newman, took part in the first public demonstration against the Act, on the occasion of the Social Science Congress meeting at Bristol in October, 1869, when the National Anti-Contagious Diseases Acts Association was formed.

The appeal to take up this cause reached me first from a group of medical men, who (all honour to them) had for some time been making strenuous efforts to prevent the introduction in our land of the principle of regulation by the State of the social evil. The experience gained during their efforts had convinced them that in order to be successful they must summon to their aid forces far beyond the arguments, strong as these were, based on physiological, scientific grounds. They recognised that the persons most insulted by the Napoleonic system with which our legislators of that day had become enamoured, being women, these women must find representatives of their own sex to protest against and to claim a practical repentance from the Parliament and Government which had flung this insult in their face.

It was on landing at Dover from our delightful summer tour in 1869, that we first learned that a small clique in Parliament had been too successfully busy over this work of darkness during the hot August days, or rather nights, in a thin House, in which most of those present were but vaguely cognisant of the meaning and purpose of the proposed constitutional change.

During the three months which followed the receipt of this communication I was very unhappy. I can only give a very imperfect impression of the sufferings of that time. The toils and conflicts of the years that followed were light in comparison with the anguish of that first plunge into the full realisation of the villainy there is in the world, and the dread of being called to oppose it. Like Jonah, when he was charged by God with a commission which he could not endure to contemplate, “I fled from the face of the Lord.” I worked hard at other things—good works, as I thought—with a kind of half-conscious hope that God would accept that work, and not require me to go further, and run my heart against the naked sword which seemed to be held out. But the hand of the Lord was upon me: night and day the pressure increased. From an old manuscript book in which I sometimes wrote I quote the following:—

September, 1869.—“Now is your hour, and the power of darkness.” O Christ, if Thy Spirit fainted in that hour, how can mine sustain it? It is now many weeks since I knew that Parliament had sanctioned this great wickedness, and I have not yet put on my armour, nor am I yet ready. Nothing so wears me out, body and soul, as anger, fruitless anger; and this thing fills me with such an anger, and even hatred, that I fear to face it. The thought of this atrocity kills charity and hinders my prayers. But there is surely a way of being angry without sin. I pray Thee, O God, to give me a deep, well-governed, and lifelong hatred of all such injustice, tyranny and cruelty; and at the same time give me that divine compassion which is willing to live and suffer long for love to souls, or to fling itself into the breach and die at once. This is perhaps after all the very work, the very mission, I longed for years ago, and saw coming, afar off, like a bright star. But seen near, as it approaches, it is so dreadful, so difficult, so disgusting, that I tremble to look at it; and it is hard to see and know whether or not God is indeed calling me concerning it. If doubt were gone, and I felt sure He means me to rise in revolt and rebellion (for that it must be) against men, even against our rulers, then I would do it with zeal, however repulsive to others may seem the task.

Appeals continued to pour in. I read all that was sent to me, and I vividly recalled all that I had learned before of this fatal system and its corrupting influence in continental cities—the madness and despair into which it drives the most despised of society, who are yet God’s redeemed ones, and the blindness and hardness of heart which it begets in all who approach it in its practical administration, or in any way except in the way of uncompromising hostility. And the call seemed to come ever more clearly.

So far I had endured in silence, I could not bear the thought of making my dear companion a sharer of the pain; yet I saw that we must needs be united in this as in everything else. I had tried to arrange to suffer alone, but I could not act alone, if God should indeed call me to action. It seemed to me cruel to have to tell him of the call, and to say to him that I must try and stand in the breach. My heart was shaken by the foreshadowing of what I knew he would suffer. I went to him one evening when he was alone, all the household having retired to rest. I recollect the painful thoughts that seemed to throng that passage from my room to his study. I hesitated, and leaned my cheek against his closed door; and as I leaned I prayed. Then I went in, and gave him something I had written, and left him. I did not see him till the next day. He looked pale and troubled, and for some days was silent. But by and by we spoke together about it freely, and (I do not clearly recollect how or when) we agreed together that we must move in the matter, and that an appeal must be made to the people. (Already many members of both Houses of Parliament, bishops and responsible officials had been appealed to, but so far in vain.) I spoke to my husband then of all that had passed in my mind, and said, “I feel as if I must go out into the streets and cry aloud, or my heart will break.” And that good and noble man, foreseeing what it meant for me and for himself, spoke not one word to suggest difficulty or danger or impropriety in any action which I might be called to take. He did not pause to ask, “What will the world say?” or “Is this suitable work for a woman?” He had pondered the matter, and looking straight, as was his wont, he saw only a great wrong, and a deep desire to redress that wrong—a duty to be fulfilled in fidelity to that impulse, and in the cause of the victims of the wrong; and above all he saw God, who is of “purer eyes than to behold iniquity,” and whose call (whatever it be) it is man’s highest honour to obey; and his whole attitude in response to my words cited above expressed, “Go! and God be with you.”

I went forth, but not exactly into the streets, to cry aloud. I took the train to the nearest large station—Crewe—where there is a great manufactory of locomotives and a mass of workmen. I scarcely knew what I should say, and knew not at all what I should meet with. A friend acquainted with the workmen led me after work hours to their popular hall, and when I had delivered my message, a small group of leaders among the men bade me thrice welcome in the name of all there. They surprised me by saying, “We understand you perfectly. We in this group served an apprenticeship in Paris, and we have seen and know for ourselves the truth of what you say. We have said to each other that it would be the death-knell of the moral life of England were she to copy France in this matter.”

From Crewe I went to Leeds, York, Sunderland and Newcastle-on-Tyne, and then returned home. The response to our appeal from the working-classes, and from the humbler middle class in the northern and midland counties and in Scotland, exceeded our utmost expectations. In less than three weeks after this first little propagandist effort, the working-men of Yorkshire, recognised leaders in political and social movements, had organised mass meetings, and agreed on a programme of action, to express the adhesion of the working-classes of the north to the cause advocated.

Meanwhile the Ladies’ National Association for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts had been formed towards the end of 1869, and on the last day of that year their solemn protest appeared in the Daily News. This protest is here given in full, because from it can be sufficiently gathered the nature and scope of the Contagious Diseases Acts, and also because it sums up the objections which were then and have ever since been raised by those who have strenuously opposed the regulation of vice involved in those Acts, and in the similar systems in operation in other countries; objections based upon the two fundamental principles of an equal moral standard for men and women, and of the equal treatment of men and women by the law of the land.

“We, the undersigned, enter our solemn protest against these Acts. (1) Because, involving as they do such a momentous change in the legal safeguards hitherto enjoyed by women in common with men, they have been passed not only without the knowledge of the country, but unknown in a great measure to Parliament itself; and we hold that neither the Representatives of the People nor the Press fulfil the duties which are expected of them, when they allow such legislation to take place without the fullest discussion. (2) Because, so far as women are concerned, they remove every guarantee of personal security which the law has established and held sacred, and put their reputation, their freedom, and their persons absolutely in the power of the police. (3) Because the law is bound, in any country professing to give civil liberty to its subjects, to define clearly an offence which it punishes. (4) Because it is unjust to punish the sex who are the victims of a vice, and leave unpunished the sex who are the main cause both of the vice and its dreaded consequences; and we consider that liability to arrest, forced medical treatment, and (where this is resisted) imprisonment with hard labour, to which these Acts subject women, are punishments of the most degrading kind. (5) Because by such a system the path of evil is made more easy to our sons, and to the whole of the youth of England, inasmuch as a moral restraint is withdrawn the moment the State recognises, and provides convenience for, the practice of a vice which it thereby declares to be necessary and venial. (6) Because these measures are cruel to the women who come under their action—violating the feelings of those whose sense of shame is not wholly lost, and further brutalising even the most abandoned. (7) Because the disease which these Acts seek to remove has never been removed by any such legislation. The advocates of the system have utterly failed to show, by statistics or otherwise, that these regulations have in any case, after several years’ trial, and when applied to one sex only, diminished disease, reclaimed the fallen, or improved the general morality of the country. We have on the contrary the strongest evidence to show that in Paris and other continental cities, where women have long been outraged by this system, the public health and morals are worse than at home. (8) Because the conditions of this disease in the first instance are moral not physical. The moral evil, through which the disease makes its way, separates the case entirely from that of the plague, or rather scourges, which have been placed under police control or sanitary care. We hold that we are bound, before rushing into experiments of legalising a revolting vice, to try to deal with the causes of the evil, and we dare to believe, that with wiser teaching and more capable legislation, those causes would not be beyond control.”

Over one hundred and twenty names were attached to the Protest when it first appeared, but the number very soon reached two thousand, including those of Josephine Butler, Harriet Martineau, Florence Nightingale, Mary Carpenter, Mary Priestman, Agnes McLaren, Ursula Bright, Margaret Lucas, all the most prominent women in the Society of Friends, and many others well known in the literary and philanthropic world. A friendly Member of Parliament wrote:“Your manifesto has shaken us very badly in the House of Commons; a leading man in the House remarked to me, ‘We know how to manage any other opposition in the House or in the country, but this is very awkward for us—this revolt of the women. It is quite a new thing; what are we to do with such an opposition as this?’”

Since some have supposed that the opponents of the Acts objected to any measures for the diminution of the special diseases in question—because forsooth! that would involve an interference with God’s method of punishing sin—it may be well to point out that Josephine Butler took a very different line in her first pamphlet on the subject, An Appeal to the People of England, by “an English Mother,” published early in 1870. In this she first goes over the whole ground of objections to the arbitrary and compulsory character of the Acts in a masterly and moving argument; and then proceeds to plead earnestly for a better and humaner way of dealing with the matter, and in the forefront of her proposals she places the provision of the most ample free hospital accommodation, worked on an absolutely voluntary basis, and as far as possible by woman doctors; and she argues from experience that this would be more likely, than any compulsory system, to lead to a decrease of disease, while at the same time affording more hope of moral influences prevailing, and leading to reformed lives, as well as cured bodies.