APPENDIX. Reflections on Seduction. (continued 2)

Many a valuable young man has thus been lost to his family and the world: nor is the fate of the poor unhappy females generally much more enviable. Some of them, it is true, do occasionally succeed in obtaining 381settlements from old dotards; and others in appearance enjoy all the conveniences of ease, luxury and affluence; but truth will allow the suggestion, that there is not one in a thousand who does not on some occasion or other experience every sorrow and anguish that can contribute to fill up life’s bitterest cup. Where is there, or ever has been, a woman of this abandoned class, who did not feel at some sad hour of reflection most acutely the degradation of her state? Which of them has not in the cravings of hunger, houseless and friendless, in feelings of heart-consuming and unavailing sorrow, tacitly acknowledged the slavish chains and bondage in which she was inextricably trammelled and held down by sin?

A lingering sense of shame, perhaps, drives some other of those unhappy and forlorn beings to a lodging of such a description as suits her scanty means. There, in a room which is seldom half furnished, the degraded and desolate object, with a forced and pitiable cheerfulness badly harmonizing with the settled marks of sorrow in her countenance, induces the visits of companions of the other sex, unknowing or careless that, by this wretched means of obtaining to herself a subsistence, she is leading him, in whom centre the cherished hopes, perhaps, of some respectable family, from the paths of duty into future and unavoidable iniquity. Thoughtless youths of this description find it easy to purloin money and articles from home, to secure the good opinion of their attractive mistress. The still unhappy creature, though above the dread of want, puts on a new character, becomes prudent from 382necessity, and loses no chance of improving her present harvest.

Too often, however, will pity say, the picture is reversed. Some low, designing wretch, struggling with want and subsisting by the meanest schemes, contrives to gain the fair one’s notice, is permitted to visit, and by dint of assiduities and moving representations of his altered fortunes, in a well tissued tale of distress he wins her compassion; and the generous girl (for the generosity of the confiding female heart is boundless) admits the plausible miscreant to her table, and shares with him her purse; nor has the worthless vagabond the slightest sense of shame or compunction in subsisting wholly on her miserable gains. Soon, then, she begins to feel misfortune keenly; her favouring visitors fail, the sources of her sad emolument are dried up; her clothes and trinkets go to the pawnbroker’s; her ingrate protegé, no longer to batten on her miserable resources, robs her; and the unfeeling landlord, or his vociferous drunken wife, pretends now for the first time to have found out her way of life, and, under the pretence of conscientious abhorrence, turns her into the street without an article save what is on her person.

O happy, happy daughters of virtue! when you contrast your situation with that of this frail and wretched sister, be grateful to Heaven for the blessings you enjoy; guard your every step with prudent vigilance, lest at any moment you be tempted to go astray from the ways of “pleasantness and peace.” Perhaps the misfortune of this wretched girl has drawn her from a 383state once as delightful as your own; education and the seeds of early virtue may have been implanted in her bosom, and were lovely in their growth, until blasted by the seducer: observe now her once beautiful form, worn down and emaciated by want and sickness, nay worse, tainted with that destructive disease which is ever attendant on such a course; see her, in short, pining and wasting away under multiplied sorrows, and sinking rapidly into a premature grave!

Yet, even before that relief arrives, her wretchedness is too probably increased by associating with depraved females of the same class; (for how can she avoid those amongst whom she must live?) their habit of drinking spirits becomes familiar to her; the delusive poison affords a temporary relief, but hastens on a painful, lingering death, which takes place, perhaps, in some forsaken shed, or unfurnished weatherbeaten room: there, without fire, light or comfort of any kind, there see the emaciated, diseased, starving, and desolate being sigh out the last breath of a miserable life;—no friend is nigh to comfort—no accustomed voice is heard to sooth or cheer her last awful moments of existence, or, by once pronouncing her name, to seek assurance that as yet her soul may not have taken flight!

In this faint sketch, which, mark! is from very life, I have endeavoured to point out some of the innumerable evils which follow the baneful footsteps of those flagitious traders in female virtue and happiness. How many a poor sorrowing female, who has once listened to the destructive tempter, and suffered her 384good sense to be blinded by seductive art, has been obliged to tread in such a painful road of thorns, debasement and affliction!

From the humble, bashful servant-maid, who has been seduced by the fellow servant, in order to win her over to a diabolical design laid by another as low in infamy if not condition as himself, for the ruin of her young mistress, and which too often through her persevering wicked agency becomes successful, up to the dashing woman of pleasure, maintaining a proud establishment by the base traffic and barter of female innocence,—all is a bloated mass of wickedness and falsehood. Most unhappy indeed, and lamentable, is the lot of those innocent, unpolluted girls who are drawn within the incantations of such licentious syrens, smiling but to destroy, while their execrable purpose is always enveloped in blandishments and charms, to lull the apprehensions of the modest and virtuous victim, led along as unsuspecting of danger as the lamb that licks the slaughtering knife.

The humble but industrious and virtuous girl apprenticed to a respectable dress-maker is marked down by another class of prowlers, more showy, specious and experienced. These, to dazzle at once the eyes of the hapless virgin, make a grand display of equipage, servants in livery, splendid house and luxurious table; the softest protestations, the most alluring promises, and apparently fondest expressions possible, are ever at hand. Thus, with the aid of presents, and by force of ever-renewed compliments, against which how few female minds can be duly guarded! the giddy creature in an unlucky moment forgets all the precepts of an 385anxious mother, and of a revered father whose grey hairs and sacred profession should have protected from the insult,—all vanish before the wily tempter’s skill, and disappear until woful experience opens the eyes of the infatuated girl to a sense of her lost reputation, and despair prepares her for the worst, the dernier fate of those in such condition.

Turn, inhuman destroyer!—take the last look at your heart-bleeding victim before you leave her to utter destruction. If a spark of honour, of even self-regard, lurk yet among your base unbridled passions, pause for a moment,—let recollection flash on the youthful days of your amiable wife;—such a villain as you have now become would have separated her life from yours:—You have daughters—cast a father’s look on them, and judge from your own feelings, if a father’s feelings can be yours, what you must have inflicted, in the disgrace of that ruined girl, who, now fallen and by you debased, clings around your feet, upon the hearts of a peaceful, respectable, and hitherto happy family.

Can this man make any recompense for his barbarous crime? He titles as a Lord; but vain are his immense treasures, his glittering equipages, to restore her lost innocence: no—no effort of his can sooth the remorse of her whom his guilt has made so miserable. Poor is the refuge from a worrying conscience, in the thought that ample provision has been made for the sorrower’s support, whose early death will relieve her at once from his odious bounty and her intolerable misery.

Endless as distressing would be the undertaking to 386particularize the detestable variety of iniquity thus practised; or to enumerate all the suicides, child-murders, and secret crimes which hence originate, in all their turpitude. Of this one deplorable fact I have had assurance in the case of the female convicts late under my care on board the Morley, who invariably acknowledged, when on the subject of their misfortunes, that seduction first led the way to guilt, and that the baneful career in which the sentence of the law had arrested them, might be decidedly dated from the fatal moment of their fall from virtue.

To arrest the progress of female prostitution, various expedients and measures have been proposed, and as numerous arguments urged in favour of their efficacy. The most ingenious British writer on the subject seems to be Dr. Colquhoun, whose zealous labours have long indeed been meritoriously directed to his country’s benefit. While his active vigilance has in many cases been successfully devoted to the investigation and repression of crime, his opinions in the main are correct and luminous.

In the remedy, however, which he proposes for female prostitution, his love of police system appears to me to have carried him beyond his depth, further perhaps than he intended. The measure he recommends is modestly covered by a few superficial, ingenious arguments, but, when divested of this learned covering, presents an appearance not very satisfactory to an English eye, and to that of stern virtue is even truly frightful—granting to prostitutes legal licenses!

The learned Doctor first endeavours to soften the scruples of his timid readers by argument both speculative 387and specious; after which he gravely asks, “Where then is the objection?” and then immediately answers his own question, “In vulgar prejudice only.” He continues, “By those of inferior education, whose peculiar habits and pursuits have generated strong prejudices, this excuse may be pleaded; but by the intelligent and well-informed it will be viewed through a more correct medium.”

It might have the appearance of presumptuous temerity to oppose an opinion to this sweeping dogma of the learned Doctor; for, agreeably to his definition, I must confess that I am one of those of inferior education and vulgar prejudices whom he so designates. It may however be permitted me candidly to state, that I have viewed his proposition in every possible light, and have had some few opportunities of observing the effects of such a system, but somewhat modified, in several parts of the world; and that, after reflection as close and intense as my mind is capable of giving to any subject, I have decidedly formed an opinion, that the result of such an arrangement would be the very reverse of what he pronounces. It would, I firmly believe, be impossible for ingenuity to invent any thing that could contribute more effectually to vitiate the public opinion, and entirely extinguish the moral principle, than the open toleration or licensing of public brothels.

The Doctor surely must have forgotten that indulgence in this sin, more than any other, prepares the mind for the admission of every vice, and is generally the forerunner of the most diabolical and desperate 388depravity in vulgar life; and in the higher walks even leads to dissoluteness, profligacy, and total disregard of moral and religious obligations: or would he venture with confidence “to prescribe rules ‘Thus far shall you go, and no further?’” Under the superintendence even of so able a magistrate as himself, would it be possible to apply this rule? But of this I am confident, that no plain honest man who wishes to promote the cause of morality, and the general welfare of his country, will ever desire to see this experiment tried in England.

In support of the propriety of this salutary measure, the Doctor adduces examples drawn from Holland, Italy, and India. In the first of those countries my own observation has been rather limited, though quite sufficient to convince me, that under no circumstances or modifications whatever could the Doctor’s expectations of the system in its consequences be realized. That the morals of the people of that country were formerly as pure, or “the purest of any in Europe,” as he states, I am nothing loth to admit; but that their corruption and degeneracy have been in a great measure occasioned by this very sanction, or connivance, cannot, I think, be disputed.

In Italy, it is true, the system has had a wider range, and its effects have been fully developed. The Doctor’s intercourse with that country must have been limited indeed, else he would have known, that long established habits of libertinism had indisposed and incapacitated the majority of them for all useful intellectual pursuits; and that their minds generally were 389too enervated to give birth to, much less sustain, any of those noble virtues which only and irresistibly command admiration.

Of the Italian women it is really an ungracious and painful task to be compelled at all to speak: but although I cannot in justice give them my unqualified approbation; and although censure, if it deserve that name, be given in gentleness, yet it must be declared that that prompt and resolute decision against guilt, and its indulgence, which forms so amiable a portion of the English character, is not often, I fear, to be met with in the women of Italy.

Against the opposition which he expected would be raised against his favourite plan, the Doctor urges “Plus apud me ratio valebit quam vulgi opinio;” but in proposing Italy, where morals and chastity have long dwindled to a name, and are now deplored as nearly extinct, as a model for British imitation, does he keep in sight the best part of his own maxim?

The introduction of Italian manners and customs amongst our females, might certainly gratify the utmost wish of the man of the world, and every professed rake or libertine; but it would be leaving the husband most probably no other security for his wife’s fidelity than the want of a paramour and suitable opportunity. The people of that country are notoriously licentious, practising without a blush, in open day, the most immoral and disgraceful excesses. I regret as deeply as any one, the vicious propensities of our own countrywomen, which it is grievous to observe are so extensively a subject for reprehension: yet it is far from gratifying or honouring to our nature, to entertain a conviction 390which follows from the lamentable fact, that the degradation of female chastity is, beyond all proportion, greater in Italy than it is at home.

I shall detain the reader with only a remark or two on the unhappy class of females in India, to whom the Doctor alludes as being devoted to indiscriminate intercourse, but whose morals in other respects, he says, are strictly guarded, and whose minds are not susceptible of that degree of depravity which prevails in Europe. It is with much reluctance, and no small degree of diffidence, that I feel it necessary to differ from one whose shining talents have contributed so eminently to the public good. However, as I have reason to presume that he never was in India, he must have had his information from a second, who probably had his from a third, and who most likely felt himself authorized to take advantage of the traveller’s privilege. Be this as it may, I am well assured that the purity he speaks of as there existing, is no where to be found, and that the behaviour of prostitutes in that country is marked by all the depravity of mind, and corruptness of manners, that can tend to imbrute the feeling, and fill the mind of the observer with the most sickening disgust.

But allowing the Doctor’s notion of the subject to be correct, and admitting all the force of his political maxim, “Qui non vetat peccare cum possit, jubet,”—still, I think, it would be extremely difficult, and attended with the utmost danger, to apply them to practice^[32]. If the positive commands of God, and the awful 391denunciations of his wrath, can be violated and disregarded in one case, what is there to ensure obedience and respect to them in any other? In the 13th chapter 4th verse of the Hebrews it is declared, “whoremongers and adulterers God will judge.” If the Legislature can grant a license to commit this crime with impunity, and thus far neither judges nor condemns, why may it not also, as moral principle alone is concerned, give one for committing murder, or any other deadly sin? In short, what would there be then to defer from trampling on the Decalogue, or the Bible itself, provided the countenance of Government, upon some view of mere policy, could be obtained in the shape and denomination of a license?

Having thus expressed an entire and unqualified disapprobation of any measure that could be construed into a public sanction of brothels, and their wretched inmates, it may be expected that I should myself substitute some efficient proposition on the subject. I should indeed consider such a task a duty, and feel pleasure in its performance, as far as my competency might extend, were I not fully satisfied that there are many, very many, in the country, whose zeal and abilities more eminently qualify them for a disquisition so important, while their political influence is such as to give them a hope, to me not in prospect, of successfully advocating the cause of innocence, virtue, religion, and social happiness.

THE END.

Printed by R. and A. Taylor.

Shoe Lane London.

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