V.

“In short, the truth must be spoken. Woe to those who speak it not, and woe to you if you are not worthy of hearing it.”

Letter from Fènèlon to Louis XIV.

The investigation of this melancholy subject has placed before us the progress of the evil, through the destitution and dependence of the young women of the lower classes; and the impunity, and even the protection, of the agents and accomplices of profligacy. This too clear and a thousand times attested degradation of the woman by discomfort and poverty, this glut in the supply of prostitution on the market in seasons of dearth of employment, enables us to understand the error of certain anti-economical doctrines representing that the man, who is the bread-winner for four, is ever his wife’s and mother’s and child’s protector at his fireside.^[50]

The sad eloquence of facts too often shews us the possessors of income, fortune and wealth corrupting those suffering from destitution and hunger. We must in a measure base the regeneration of France upon material independence, the source of woman’s dignity; and, consequently, we call for a widely extended system of professional instruction, of liberty of action which may, if possible, introduce into the laws of wages the equality which obtains in those of real estate.

With reference to the impunity and protection of the immoral man, they are condemned by sound reason bearing testimony that every society disloyal to the laws that maintain its vitality, must perish by continually-increasing degeneracy. The purpose of human existence is moral perfection, not 66happiness, much less those vulgar, coarse, and fatal pleasures which, by lowering man to the level of the brute, destroy the institution of marriage, together with the domestic virtues and the rights of the weak. Let us then reject the sophisms of erring and depraved intellects, which represent that paths must be opened to profligacy if we would have the sanctuary of the family institution respected. In the slough of the Roman empire, the rights and necessities of passions not to be resisted were already being talked of, when Christianity replied by raising man and woman to the same moral perfection.

Let us further remind our self-satisfied people of the prosperity of the family principle among nations which put down prostitution, and of its decline among those who permitted it: perhaps they will, at length, understand the value of the argument from facts.

Be it, in the first place, remarked that the irresponsibility of the father of children born out of wedlock, which gives him every advantage in going after prostitutes, is the most fruitful cause of profligacy. I would, then, make other repressive measures subordinate to the effort to make the father responsible. After placing this corner-stone of social law in such a position as to act with rigour against prostitution, we shall scarcely need to inquire if that evil can be restrained.

Human dignity and civil equality are opposed to penal measures against the common prostitute as such. This is the point from which to start on the effort to discover a just measure for checking prostitution. Ancient France was ignorant alike of registration and the frightful “surveillance” it necessitates. We know that modern nations governed by the laws of true honour have maintained justice enough to be horrified at this utter destruction of the human soul for the benefit of debauchery. The nations that are seized with the desire of emulating our system for the regulation of morals 67have, on the contrary, fallen to an unspeakable degree of degradation.^[51]

What deep seated corruption does the unrestricted haunting of places of ill-repute by beings endowed with that threefold bridle of the passions—reason, intelligence, and liberty—take for granted! Prostitution is an irreparable ill for young men who, by it, lose the pure source of the moral affections. We must therefore, at any cost, snatch them from this infamy, make them feel its horror, and, above all, not make use of the threefold complicity of government, legislation, and jurisprudence, to promise the safe-keeping of their health, their money, and their secret in their profligate courses.

I have, previously, made apparent the immorality which this organization indicates; for physical, intellectual, and moral penalties are, let us repeat, society’s only safeguard against vicious persons. It is everywhere attested, by experience, that the certainty, the hope merely, of escaping punishment, multiplies vicious habits; thus, when the Government does not watch over the debauchee with so paternal a solicitude, a first step in vice is frequently—on account of the misery, disgrace, maladies and mental incapacity it entails—a living lesson for the young, who imbibe the feeling of discretion by making a comparison between the gratification and its consequences. It is a stringent duty of morality and logic, then, to take away from human merchandise the official impress, in order that the buyer, acting at his own risk and peril, may become more circumspect; so that, trained to imbibe a horror of profligacy, individuals should not persist in feeding on the poison, and should catch some sense of self-respect by at least the feeling of responsibility, added to the interposition of other subjects of interest. Certain men would perhaps be 68ashamed to haunt places which, if left unprotected in their infamy, would no longer be looked upon as necessary institutions. Let us then deplore the infatuation of those communities which talk of the teaching of morality while they protect the debauchee; as if a part of the teaching of morality did not consist in causing the good and bad consequences of human action to be apparent; as if moralists could have authority in circumstances where vice is compulsorily invested with rights, while virtue is clogged by penalties.

I go on to add, that our immorality is cruel. If it be a folly to preserve certain men from the natural contagion consequent on their vices, it is a crime to multiply opportunities for vice, so as to decoy the individuals who, after disgracing themselves on the faith of what society holds out to them as safe, bequeath to us a heritage of curses when they are on the brink of the grave prematurely dug by their own profligacy. It is a crime of treason against the nation to send carcases, whether dead or living, back to families needing citizens and regulators of social education. Let us, then, get rid of all the frightful tolerations which set prostitution free from the rebuking and regenerating influences of a personal initiative. At all events, as the dens of infamy would not exist if there were not proprietresses to keep them, and men to frequent them, measures of repression brought to bear on girls only must be ineffective, since they do not reach the source of the evil. The same action should be brought to bear by the police on these houses as on gambling houses. This practicable and greatly-needed reform would inevitably be followed by the making every excitement to debauchery in the public street illegal, and by the right of complaint for every man accosted by a woman to whom he is not known, as for every woman addressed by a man with whom she was not previously acquainted. What a shame it is that, owing to debauchery, a civilization should tolerate, at particular hours, 69in these human flesh-markets, the suspension of God’s laws, which is the cause of ruin for thousands of young men who would never have become acquainted with profligacy if it had not been offered to them daily with such persistency, and who are unable to take a step, in our towns, without meeting with it.^[52]

We have been enabled to see what a mistake it is to pretend that our Government toleration is necessary for the protection of modest women. If that were the case, we may be sure they would reject this annihilation of their sisters for their benefit; but it is proved, on the contrary, that the insecurity of every woman results from the prerogatives granted to vice in France. Are we not aware, that nations which have not our monstrous measures of preservation, permit the girl to go out, to travel, and live by herself, for the purpose of either the secondary or the higher course of instruction; whilst in Paris more than 100,000 regulars and soldiers of the national guard, and a numerous body of police, fail to inspire the young woman of the middle class with sufficient confidence to allow her to venture a single step without a protector, or the lower-class young woman with a security sufficient to keep her from being made a merchantable article? Without even leaving our territory, any one may be convinced, by comparison, that the unprotected woman is so much the more respected in proportion as profligacy has less of license. Charts of France have been made, coloured more or less black according to the degree of instruction in each of our “departments.” It would be easy to make such an one for morality. It would demonstrate that the departments in which the machinery for morals is the most active, the most inquisitorial towards the registered girl, are those in which a young girl who should have committed the offence of walking out “unprotected” is no longer marriageable.

70Debauchery, driven from the street, would also be driven from cafés, hotels, &c., otherwise than by laughter-moving and arbitrary regulations against the “unprotected” woman. In this matter, then, we must further substitute, for police rule, a general law to reach the real doers of the evil, in the persons of those lodging-house keepers, tavern-keepers, coffee-house proprietors, &c., who, by the greediest complicity, make vice a matter of trade. But, alas! the law promulgated in 1778 alone remained to us for dealing a blow at this abuse, and, after applying it during the former half of the century, we declare it to be inapplicable in the latter, without finding a substitute for it. Shall we profess ourselves too much depraved to go back in this matter even to the measures adopted by a reforming Government at the period of the greatest decay of morals in our former monarchy?

The offence of treating for girls under age also demands a more severe law. The uncertainty of the penalty, the feeble attempts to put down the evil, as they appear when viewed with reference to the certainty of immediate advantages to be gained by it, do not stop the agents of procuration. The impunity assured to the person for whom the sale is effected also gives to this kind of offences a deplorable frequency and daring, in a country that punishes for a triple complicity, and by civic degradation, the printer, author, and editor of writings whose offence has sometimes been disseminating useful truths.

Profligacy driven from the public thoroughfares in this way, and from establishments frequented by men without a home, the honour of the girl under age being efficiently cared for, inexperienced youth will no longer fall into the inextricable pitfalls of prostitution; no one but the depraved man will, with the utmost caution, go into these sties of infamy, to gratify a vicious propensity which would be left to its natural consequences.

71A community which sanctions the family principle should, further, spare us the scandal of actions for debt and theft brought by the prostituter against the prostituted. When our courts of law intervene to annul the engagements which those above or those under age have contracted with courtesans, it follows that these corrupters or these corrupted ones have procured for themselves, by false pretences, on credit or for a specific period, a gratification which the judge, as they have reason for knowing, will take upon himself to make a gratuitous one, and that their disgrace, which ought to close the ear of justice to their suits, finds such privileges as to permit them to do a wrong to the tradesmen who supply them with goods. Sound views will recognise the validity of these debts, or, in annulling them, punish the complainant for the fact of having prostituted himself; it is, above all, for cases such as these that article 60 of our Criminal Code should be declared applicable, thereby punishing every individual who incites to profligacy by presents. Very much to the contrary, the application of the law becomes deplorable in this matter; Lovelaces aged from 15 to 20, precocious Don Juans, become villains with impunity by the assistance of the law’s protection—spend some hundreds of thousands of francs in orgies, with the certainty of committing robbery; they promise, give their signatures, subscribe documents, and the court declares them white as snow, provided they do not pay anything; and this is the education by which we prepare young people for their life as citizens! What! is it to be supposed that these young men, who to-morrow will be electors, citizens, public officials, judges, magistrates perhaps, are not capable, at the age of 19 and 20 years, of a greater moral responsibility than the infant in long-clothes? Cancel their debts, if you like; but at least brand them for their cynical attacks on the fundamental laws of public propriety.

72We must get rid of our confusion of principles with respect to those young people who, separated from their family by their profession, are entrusted to society. In the first place, in what has reference to the soldier, patriotism and a feeling of true honour, would not give him up to be corrupted by long years of inaction in garrison, and would not permit any man to lead the life of a pig under cover of the flag of France. Now that we are threatened with the corporal-instructor, we ought, I think, to be permitted to know that his certificate of good conduct has not compelled him to disavow his illegitimate children, nor to denounce and imprison the victim guilty of having aimed a blow against his security in debauchery.

As for that numerous body of civilian youths fighting on the battle-field of life in schools, in public offices, workshops, commerce and so forth, shall we leave them without a guide, to succumb to the degradation of the companions of Ulysses? No; they must henceforward do themselves honour by putting a curb on their passions and mastering their excesses. It is the duty of us all to shew them, from the commencement of their course, marked distinctions between the road to honour and that to infamy by imposing obligatory limits to stop them in bad courses. It is the right of moral families to know that the member they wish to unite to them by marriage is a man, and not a living carcase, sullied with all sorts of profligacy.

Let us then establish courts of honour to separate goodness from evil—great associations which will confer distinction on themselves by the morality they exact from their candidates and those whom they employ, putting us thus upon the road of reformation.

Each of us has, in this matter, his work to accomplish, and we shall succeed if we know how to be united in a common feeling. The law for outrage on public morals would authorize 73us in a rebellion against our administrative toleration of vice; all men of courage, claiming the emancipation of destitution sold to profligacy, must likewise denounce the shamelessness of those men who would, with one hand, punish the freedom of the press while protecting the obscenity of the streets with the other; who ill-use free-thinkers while they grant charters to free livers. In what has reference to legislative repression Art. 334 of our Criminal Law, joined to Art. 60, of which I have spoken, would be sufficient for putting down the evil, if applied to direct profligacy, especially in actions for debt and theft which debauchees bring against their accomplices.

It is, nevertheless, to Art. 340 of our Civil Code that the guilty complaisance of our interpretation of the law for profligate morals must be attributed. The license into which the irresponsibility there laid down hurries a great number of law students, greatly contributes to warp their judgment in these suits, and to take from vice its last restraint. Alas! shall we have the energy necessary for a real reform? We have astonishingly perfected the physical sciences, and developed material civilization; but we have so little advanced in the science of the law and the duty which govern our connexions in society, our ambition is so little excited for the development of human dignity, that we put our frightful complaisance for debauchery under the patronage of St. Augustine and St. Louis. Should we be willing to retrograde to such an extent in the arts and mechanical processes—we who, in morals, dare to take our ideal in pagan and barbarian society? When our Senate, some years ago, discussed this grave question, it did not put the inquiry to itself, whether seduction and irresponsible debauchery are the great highways of public infamy; still less did it examine if despotic centralization, which arbitrarily deprives the young girl of professional instruction, 74and the woman of an honourable income, does not at all contribute to her ruin. This Senate, the guardian of morals, refrained from looking round within its own precincts, to see if it were not, in any way, harbouring members whose example might weaken the authority of its precepts; it did not seem to suspect that a courtesan is the effect of a debauchee who pays for her, and it did not at all wish to know if its sons were contributing to the evil: laying it wholly upon the luxuriousness of women, it contented itself with some pleasantries, and, far from opposing strong means of resistance to profligacy, declared that Art. 484 of our Criminal Code sufficed for putting down vice.^[53] Almost immediately after this discussion, the Asiatic pest, raging around us, threatened our physical existence. Oh! then we became the champions of progress; we knew how to attack the evil in its very source; our civilizing efforts were proposing to purify the Ganges itself—the home of the epidemic: ordering inquiries, putting sixteen questions to the meeting of the international conference at Constantinople, we made an appeal to the enlightened intelligence of the whole world. Why then does our energy fail in view of the plague of public profligacy, more fatal to the moral life of a nation than is the cholera-epidemic to its material life? Since we know the causes of the evil, we deserve to be execrated if we do not look for wholesome means of reaction—if authorities established to put it down continue to protect it. The measures I am proposing, if they are examined by the prismatic glass of history, reason, national and personal rights, are the conditions of liberty and public decency. They will confine the evil to the dregs of society.

75When we are governed by a moral Code, the Family institution grounded on morality and labour, will be able, without aid, to tread down the hydra of debauchery, wallowing in the mire of idleness and licentiousness. But, if justice and honour do not come out victorious from the present struggle, woe, a thousand times woe, to the vanquished!

T. BRAKELL, PRINTER, LIVERPOOL.

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

Typos fixed; non-standard spelling and dialect retained.

Used numbers for footnotes, placing them all at the end of the last chapter.