The influence of legislation on public morals / Friends' Association for Abolishing the State Regulation of Vice.

Date:
[1873?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The influence of legislation on public morals / Friends' Association for Abolishing the State Regulation of Vice. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    A leader among the pro-Act advocates thinks, that if some half a million of profligate young men in the metropolis could be enabled to violate the law of purity without risk, i^50,C00 or ^^60,000 a-year could not be considered an excessive ex- penditure for the benefit thus conferred on them ! This points to the real question; and yet with the greatest complacency and assurance we are persistently told that it is a medical one. And further, as a most notable illustration of principles, let it not escape notice, that the expense of this charitable provision for safety in sinning, is to be cheerfully borne by the virtuous and the chaste. This is at least straightforward and candid. (See Medical Mirror, Feb 1. 1870.) Nothing has more tended to fortify the public mind against ' too nice inquiry, than this plausible substitution of medicine for morality. Papers industriously circulated up to this present time, profess to show by every variety of illustration, that the Act is beneficent and reformatory; and that its operation is most satisfactory. These papers speak loudly of reformation among women, of young girls saved from a career of vice, of fewer immoral characters in the streets, and generally, as stated in a document signed by 87 eminent medical men, of a more healthy moral atmosphere. [See Memorial to H. A Bruce, M.P., Dec. 1871,] It is impossible to form a just estimate of the character and value of these innumerable documents, without revertino to the fact that the leaders of the Association admit no principle which appeals to a higher sanction than that of Experiment. The result of experiment alone is decisive. In short, to point out, and to insist upon, this tremendous feature of modem English life, is the leading idea in this address. The essential gravity of the circumstances does not centre in further demoralising a few more thousands of soldiers and lailors, nor in cruelly oppressing and degrading a few thou- lands of wretched women ;—but in the existence and the )peration of a poisonous leaven, which threatens to do in the