Address delivered in Craigie Hall, Edinburgh, February 24th, 1871 / by Josephine E. Butler.

  • Josephine Butler
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address delivered in Craigie Hall, Edinburgh, February 24th, 1871 / by Josephine E. Butler. 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.

    10/16 page 10
    Again, there is the Pedlars Licensing Bill, which forbids a poor man to get a license to sell anything who may have been formerly committed for a legal offence, and which in fact says to a man, You have sinned once, you shall not henceforward be allowed to pursue an honest trade. Pre-eminent among such legislation stand the Acts against which we are contending, in this particular of branding those once fallen, and assigning them to the rank of professional and marked criminals. But I must here point out very emphatically that the Con- tagious Diseases Acts stand alone in one sense, inasmuch as they embody a far deeper iniquity than any of these other laws, and directly violate the law of God, by offering protection to a vice which in opposition to that law they pronounce to be necessary, and inasmuch as, while they cruelly brand the class to whom they apply, they at the same time give to the awful traffic which this class pursues the dignity of a recognised, legitimate, and even protected industry. It should be one of the aims of wise legislation to throw wide open the door of recovery to the lapsed classes ; and motives even of self-interest should prompt legislators to en- deavour to reinstate every criminal who has endured his legal punishment. The element, which I have tried to indicate, em- J bodied in some of our recent legislation, tends to create a large class of criminals and outlaws, of sullen and despairing people, lost to self-respect, and for ever hunted by a watchful police. We are being hurried into fearful dangers. It has appeared to me at times as if we were smitten with a curse, a judicial blindness, which is leading a Parliament, nominally the most liberal we have ever had, to inaugurate a reign of materialism and despotism. We know the effects of the growth of a prole- tariate class in ancient Borne and in other countries. We are rapidly creating at this moment a proletariate class, and the creation of such a class ensures sooner or later the smothering ] of a nation in its own mud. I hold in my hand an Act of Parliament, called A Bill for the better protection of infant life, which to some extent illustrates what I have been saying. I do not wish to be understood to condemn absolutely all such J
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3