July 2, 1870
THE SOCIAL EVIL.
. . . . Men’s lusts and women’s needs are not to be obviated by legislation. This is professedly a Christian country, but we cultivate the moralities under protest. When it shall be considered as disgraceful for a man to commit acts of immorality as it now is to dishonor his bank check, we shall have some hope for men in the matter. . . . While Magdalen cannot make sufficient by honest labor to board and clothe herself–having the while that which will bring her money, if not more easily, certainly more quickly–what can be expected of Magdalen? The iniquity is that the sorrowing self-despising Mary is condemned for submitting to her necessities, while Master Joseph, self-complacent in his new role, is approved for consulting his own pleasure. . . . Not those who fall, but those who resist, are the real objects of sympathy. Bearing privation and holding fast to honor and virtue–they are the salt of the earth, if we could but know them. . . .
The moral aspect of the whole question lies with society at large, especially with the women, the mothers, the female leaders. Legislation can do little in a matter which concerns the natural instincts of human nature. But it can do something. The stupid practice of making arrests and midnight descents is as great immorality and public disgrace as the evil itself. It is too frequently a means of black-mail. It is a way a scandal. Such coarse brutal repression does not touch causes. Penalties on landlords are just as useless. The big fish break the net. Thus it is notorious that ecclesiastical rents have been from time to time drawn from these sources without imputation on the clergy, the law being inoperative and interference vexatious. The only repressive agency admissible is a system of police license and rigorous visitation. This is not authorizing sin by statute, but simply recognizing social and physiological facts. In this way, and in this way alone, until a wholesome moral sentiment can be induced, can legislation deal with the subject. By means of visitorial supervision some check may be placed on the terrible consequences of indiscriminate intercourse. If these consequences affected only the chief actors, they might be passed with indifference; but when we know how the innocent are implicated, and what frightful maladies are engendered and constitutionally transmitted, the public health justifies the most stringent and peremptory interference.
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