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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    for Promoting the Extension of the Contagious Diseases Act [1866], to the civil population of the United Kingdom. The Third Eeport of this Association is a most elaborate and plausible compilation, well calculated to mislead the uninstructed and uninquiring reader. Its compilers start with the following positions : [See their First Keport, 1868.] 1. It holds that sufferers under any kind of contagious disease are dangerous members of society, and should, so long as they are in this state, be prevented from communicating it to others. 2. Regarding venereal disease as a contagious disease of the gravest character, It proposes to remove those affected with it from opportunity of propagating their disorder. 3. It aims at the moral and social improvement of a numerous and degraded class. 4. In carrying out these objects it is opposed to the system of licensing prostitution, which prevails in some parts of the continent. By the year 1870, the Association numbered nearly 1000 members and supporters,— seven important towns furnishing one name each! But with unimpeachable principles, and a most humane and praiseworthy object, why did not this Association, after most persevering labours, number among its well-wishers and supporters, every philanthroiaist in the Kingdom ? The Association appeals to the public in support of an object which is to be prosecuted, as they declare, on the principles embodied in the above four 'positions. The avowed object is to extend the principle of the Contagious Diseases Act of 1866 to the civil population. The only discoverable principle in this Act is, that it is right to prepare beforehand at the public expense, for the protection of soldiers and sailors from a penalty resulting from their own evil practices. The incautious reader would fail to detect any fallacy in the/ow-r positions. For the sake of argument, let us assume that they are all admissible. Even then they cannot justify the law professedly founded upon them; for that law, if it is ^*^'7'7 t(\ HnrionvrrpviT. wnn fr.tin^ ....... ..