SUGGESTIONS.
_Ignoring the Evil_—_Punishment fit for the_ “_Deserter_” _and the
Seducer_—_The_ “_Know-nothing_” _and_ “_Do-nothing_” _Principle_—_The
Emigration of Women of Bad Character_.
IT is easy enough to understand, if one finds the courage to face this
worst of all social evils, and inquire calmly into the many shapes its
origin takes, how very possible it is that there may be living in a state
of depravity scores and hundreds of women who are what they are out of no
real _fault_ of their own. “Then why do they not turn, and reform their
infamous lives?” the indignant reader may ask. “They may if they will.
Is there not this, that, and the other asylum open to them?” Perhaps so.
Only perhaps. But for reasons hinted at in the commencement of this
chapter, it might be clearly enough shown that, “this, that, and
t’other,” to a very large extent, really and truly represent the
substantiality of the asylums to which the curse is admitted for
purgation. We have foolishly and blindly ignored the evil, and
consequently we have not been free to provide adequately for the
reception of those who have lived in it, and are now desirous of
returning, if they may, to decent life. We have some asylums of the
kind; but in capacity they are about as well adapted to perform the
prodigious amount of work ready for them as a ten-gallon filter would be
to purify the muddy waters of the Thames.
Undoubtedly there are thousands of debased and wanton wretches for whom
the doors of such houses of reform and refuge, did they exist in plenty,
might in vain stand open. But let the reader for a moment consider how
many there are at this moment whose fall was mainly due to misplaced
trust and foolish confidence, and who are kept in their degradation out
of a sort of mad and bitter spite against themselves. As everyone can
vouch who has taken an interest in these fallen ones, and kindly
questioned them on their condition and their willingness to turn from it,
nothing is more common in their mouths than the answer, “I don’t care.
It’s a life good enough for me. A pretty image I should appear in
well-bred company, shouldn’t I? It’s no use your preaching to me. I’ve
made my bed, and I must lie on it.” And it would be found in countless
cases that these poor wretches did not in the original “make their bed,”
as they call it, and that it reveals a wonderful amount of forgiving and
generosity in them to profess that they did. If we could discover the
truth, we might get at the real bed-makers—the villanous conjurers of
couches of roses that were so speedily to turn to thorns and briars—in
the seducer and the base deserter. If ever the Legislature finds courage
enough to take up this great question in earnest, it is to be hoped that
ample provision will be made for the proper treatment of the heartless
scoundrel. As says a writer in an old number of the _Westminster
Review_:
“The _deserter_, not the seducer, should be branded with the same
kind and degree of reprobation with which society now visits the
coward and the cheat. The man who submits to insult rather than
fight; the gambler who packs the cards, or loads the dice, or refuses
to pay his debts of honour, is hunted from among even his
unscrupulous associates as a stained and tarnished character. _Let
the same measure of retributive justice be dealt to the seducer who
deserts the woman who has trusted him_, _and allows her to come upon
the town_. We say the deserter—not the seducer; for there is as wide
a distinction between them as there is between the gamester and the
sharper. Mere seduction will never be visited with extreme severity
among men of the world, however correct and refined may be their
general tone of morals; for they will always make large allowances on
the score of youthful passions, favouring circumstances, and excited
feeling. Moreover, they well know that there is a wide
distinction—that there are all degrees of distinction—between a man
who commits a fault of this kind, under the influence of warm
affections and a fiery temperament, and the cold-hearted, systematic
assailer of female virtue, whom all reprobate and shun. It is
universally felt that you cannot, with any justice, class these men
in the same category, nor mete out to them the same measure of
condemnation. But the man who, when his caprice is satisfied, casts
off his victim as a worn-out garment or a damaged toy; who allows the
woman who trusted his protestations to sink from the position of his
companion to the loathsome life of prostitution, because his
seduction and desertion has left no other course open to her; who is
not ready to make any sacrifice of place, of fortune, of reputation
even, in order to save one whom he has once loved from such an abyss
of wretched infamy—must surely be more stained, soiled, and hardened
in soul, more utterly unfitted for the company or sympathy of
gentlemen or men of honour, than any coward, any gambler, any cheat!”
I may not lay claim to being the discoverer of this well-written outburst
of manly indignation. It is quoted by a gentleman—a medical
gentleman—who has inquired deeper and written more to the real purpose on
this painful subject than any other writer with whom I am acquainted. I
allude to Dr. Acton. The volume that contains it is of necessity not one
that might be introduced to the drawing-room, but it is one that all
thinking men would do well to procure and peruse. Dr. Acton handles a
tremendously difficult matter masterly and courageously; and while really
he is of as delicate a mind as a lady, he does not scruple to enunciate
his honest convictions respecting the prevalent evil of prostitution, as
though it were an evil as commonly recognised and as freely discussed as
begging or thieving. In his introductory pages he says:
“To those who profess a real or fictitious ignorance of prostitution,
its miseries and its ill-effects, and those again who plead
conscience for inaction, I have this one reply. Pointing to the
outward signs of prostitution in our streets and hospitals, I inquire
whether we can flatter ourselves that the subject has drifted into a
satisfactory state on the ‘know-nothing’ and ‘do-nothing’ principle.
I hint at the perilous self-sufficiency of the Pharisee, and the
wilful blindness of the Levite who ‘passed by on the other side,’ and
I press upon them that, after reading this work and testing its
author’s veracity, they should either refute its arguments or be
themselves converted. . . . I have little to say in the way of
apology for my plain-speaking. The nature of the subject has forced
this upon me. To have called things here treated of by another than
their right name would have been in any writer an absurdity, in me a
gross one. The experiences I have collected may to optimists and
recluses appear exaggerated. The visions I have indulged in may be
hard to grasp. But this more complicated knot demands a swordsman,
not an infant. The inhabitants of a provincial city demanded of Lord
Palmerston that the angel of pestilence should be stayed by a day of
national prayer and fasting. ‘I will fast with you and pray with
you,’ was the statesman’s answer; ‘but let us also drain, scrub,
wash, and be clean.’”
If by this taste of the preface to Dr. Acton’s book I induce my male
readers to dip into it for themselves, I shall feel that I have done the
cause the worthy writer has at heart good service. It will be something
if the brief quotation bespeaks attention to the other extracts from the
same genuine source that herein appear. On the subject of seduction and
desertion, Mr. Acton writes:
“If I could not get imprisonment of the male party to a seduction
substituted for the paltry fine of half-a-crown a-week, I would at
least give to the commonwealth, now liable to a pecuniary damage by
bastardy, some interest in its detection and punishment. The
union-house is now often enough the home of the deserted mother and
the infant bastard; and the guardians of the poor ought, I think, to
have the right, in the interest of the commune, to act as bastardy
police, and to be recouped their charges. I would not allow the
maintenance of an illegitimate child to be at the expense of any but
the father. I would make it the incubus on him, not on its mother;
and I would not leave his detection, exposure, and money loss at the
option of the latter. A young man who has a second and third
illegitimate child, by different women, has not lived without adding
some low cunning to his nature. It often happens that a fellow of
this sort will, for a time, by specious promises and presents to a
girl he fully intends ultimately to desert, defer making any payments
for or on account of her child. If he can for twelve months, and
without entering into any shadow of an agreement (and we may all
guess how far the craft of an injured woman will help her to one that
would hold water), stave-off any application on her part to the
authorities, her claim at law is barred; and she herself, defied at
leisure, becomes in due course chargeable to her parish or union.
But not thus should a virtuous state connive at the obligations of
paternity being shuffled on to its public shoulders, when, by a very
trifling modification of the existing machinery, they might be
adjusted on the proper back, permanently or temporarily, as might be
considered publicly expedient. I would enact, I say, by the help of
society, that, in the first place, the seduction of a female,
properly proved, should involve the male in a heavy pecuniary fine,
according to his position—not at all by way of punishment, but to
strengthen, by the very firm abutment of the breeches-pocket, both
him and his good resolutions against the temptations and force of
designing woman. I would not offer the latter, as I foresee will be
instantaneously objected, this bounty upon sinfulness—this incentive
to be a seducer; but, on the contrary, the money should be due to the
community, and recoverable in the county-court or superior court at
the suit of its engine, the union; and should be invested by the
treasurer of such court, or by the county, or by some public trustee
in bastardy, for the benefit of the mother and child. The child’s
portion of this deodand should be retained by such public officer
until the risk of its becoming chargeable to the community
quasi-bastard should be removed by the mother’s marriage or
otherwise; and the mother’s share should be for her benefit as an
emigration-fund or marriage-portion.”
“We cannot imagine,” says another authority, “that anyone can seriously
suppose that prostitution would be made either more generally attractive
or respectable by the greater decency and decorum which administrative
supervision would compel it to throw over its exterior. We know that the
absence of these does not deter one of irregular passions from the low
pursuit; and we know, moreover, wherever these are needed for the behoof
of a more scrupulous and refined class of fornicators, they are to be
found. We are convinced also that much of the permanent ruin to the
feelings and character which results from the habit of visiting the
haunts of prostitution is to be attributed to the coarse language and the
brutal manners which prevail there; and that this vice, like many others,
would lose much of its evil by losing all of grossness that is separable
from it. Nor do we fear that the improvement in the _tone_ of
prostitution which would thus result would render its unhappy victims
less anxious to escape from it. Soften its horrors and gild its
loathsomeness as you may, there will always remain enough to revolt all
who are not wholly lost. Much too—everything almost—is gained, if you
can retain _any_ degree of self-respect among the fallen. The more of
this that remains, the greater chance is there of ultimate redemption; it
is always a mistaken and a cruel policy to allow vice to grow desperate
and reckless.” It is for the interest of society at large, as well as
for that of the guilty individual, that we should never break down the
bridge behind such a sinner as the miserable “unfortunate” even.
V.—The Curse of Drunkenness.