Note 67 — Chapter V

If they had adopted the former definition without reserving this power of arbitrary omission, this law would have told too heavily upon the great; but even supposing that virtue might have continued to wink even under this law, still oblivious to them, and might have continued, as doubtless it would, to regard that as pardonable frailty in high life which is called prostitution among the humbler classes, yet there are others who, under this law, might have been too conveniently assailed; for policemen, examining surgeons, nay even sometimes justices of the peace, may not be unacquainted with temporary connections with that mistress, their appreciation of whose faithfulness makes them dread for her the severity of such a definition.