“In short, the truth must be spoken. Woe to those who speak it not,
and woe to you if you are not worthy of hearing it.”
_Letter from Fènèlon to Louis XIV._
The investigation of this melancholy subject has placed before us the
progress of the evil, through the destitution and dependence of the
young women of the lower classes; and the impunity, and even the
protection, of the agents and accomplices of profligacy. This too clear
and a thousand times attested degradation of the woman by discomfort and
poverty, this glut in the supply of prostitution on the market in
seasons of dearth of employment, enables us to understand the error of
certain anti-economical doctrines representing that the man, who is the
bread-winner for _four_, is ever his wife’s and mother’s and child’s
protector at his fireside.[50]
The sad eloquence of facts too often shews us the possessors of income,
fortune and wealth corrupting those suffering from destitution and
hunger. We must in a measure base the regeneration of France upon
material independence, the source of woman’s dignity; and, consequently,
we call for a widely extended system of professional instruction, of
liberty of action which may, if possible, introduce into the laws of
wages the equality which obtains in those of real estate.
With reference to the impunity and protection of the immoral man, they
are condemned by sound reason bearing testimony that every society
disloyal to the laws that maintain its vitality, must perish by
continually-increasing degeneracy. The purpose of human existence is
moral perfection, not happiness, much less those vulgar, coarse, and
fatal pleasures which, by lowering man to the level of the brute,
destroy the institution of marriage, together with the domestic virtues
and the rights of the weak. Let us then reject the sophisms of erring
and depraved intellects, which represent that paths must be opened to
profligacy if we would have the sanctuary of the family institution
respected. In the slough of the Roman empire, the rights and necessities
of _passions not to be resisted_ were already being talked of, when
Christianity replied by raising man and woman to the same moral
perfection.
Let us further remind our self-satisfied people of the prosperity of the
family principle among nations which put down prostitution, and of its
decline among those who permitted it: perhaps they will, at length,
understand the value of the argument from facts.
Be it, in the first place, remarked that the irresponsibility of the
father of children born out of wedlock, which gives him every advantage
in going after prostitutes, is the most fruitful cause of profligacy. I
would, then, make other repressive measures subordinate to the effort to
make the father responsible. After placing this corner-stone of social
law in such a position as to act with rigour against prostitution, we
shall scarcely need to inquire if that evil can be restrained.
Human dignity and civil equality are opposed to penal measures against
the common prostitute as such. This is the point from which to start on
the effort to discover a just measure for checking prostitution. Ancient
France was ignorant alike of registration and the frightful
“surveillance” it necessitates. We know that modern nations governed by
the laws of true honour have maintained justice enough to be horrified
at this utter destruction of the human soul for the benefit of
debauchery. The nations that are seized with the desire of emulating our
system for the regulation of morals have, on the contrary, fallen to an
unspeakable degree of degradation.[51]
What deep seated corruption does the unrestricted haunting of places of
ill-repute by beings endowed with that threefold bridle of the
passions—reason, intelligence, and liberty—take for granted!
Prostitution is an irreparable ill for young men who, by it, lose the
pure source of the moral affections. We must therefore, at any cost,
snatch them from this infamy, make them feel its horror, and, above all,
not make use of the threefold complicity of government, legislation, and
jurisprudence, to promise the safe-keeping of their health, their money,
and their secret in their profligate courses.
I have, previously, made apparent the immorality which this organization
indicates; for physical, intellectual, and moral penalties are, let us
repeat, society’s only safeguard against vicious persons. It is
everywhere attested, by experience, that the certainty, the hope merely,
of escaping punishment, multiplies vicious habits; thus, when the
Government does not watch over the debauchee with so paternal a
solicitude, a first step in vice is frequently—on account of the misery,
disgrace, maladies and mental incapacity it entails—a living lesson for
the young, who imbibe the feeling of discretion by making a comparison
between the gratification and its consequences. It is a stringent duty
of morality and logic, then, to take away from human merchandise the
official impress, in order that the buyer, acting at his own risk and
peril, may become more circumspect; so that, trained to imbibe a horror
of profligacy, individuals should not persist in feeding on the poison,
and should catch some sense of self-respect by at least the feeling of
responsibility, added to the interposition of other subjects of
interest. Certain men would perhaps be ashamed to haunt places which, if
left unprotected in their infamy, would no longer be looked upon as
necessary institutions. Let us then deplore the infatuation of those
communities which talk of the teaching of morality while they protect
the debauchee; as if a part of the teaching of morality did not consist
in causing the good and bad consequences of human action to be apparent;
as if moralists could have authority in circumstances where vice is
compulsorily invested with rights, while virtue is clogged by penalties.
I go on to add, that our immorality is _cruel_. If it be a folly to
preserve certain men from the natural contagion consequent on their
vices, it is a crime to multiply opportunities for vice, so as to decoy
the individuals who, after disgracing themselves on the faith of what
society holds out to them as safe, bequeath to us a heritage of curses
when they are on the brink of the grave prematurely dug by their own
profligacy. It is a crime of treason against the nation to send
carcases, whether dead or living, back to families needing citizens and
regulators of social education. Let us, then, get rid of all the
frightful tolerations which set prostitution free from the rebuking and
regenerating influences of a personal initiative. At all events, as the
dens of infamy would not exist if there were not proprietresses to keep
them, and men to frequent them, measures of repression brought to bear
on girls only must be ineffective, since they do not reach the source of
the evil. The same action should be brought to bear by the police on
these houses as on gambling houses. This practicable and greatly-needed
reform would inevitably be followed by the making every excitement to
debauchery in the public street illegal, and by the right of complaint
for every man accosted by a woman to whom he is not known, as for every
woman addressed by a man with whom she was not previously acquainted.
What a shame it is that, owing to debauchery, a civilization should
tolerate, at particular hours, in these human flesh-markets, the
suspension of God’s laws, which is the cause of ruin for thousands of
young men who would never have become acquainted with profligacy if it
had not been offered to them daily with such persistency, and who are
unable to take a step, in our towns, without meeting with it.[52]
We have been enabled to see what a mistake it is to pretend that our
Government toleration is _necessary for the protection of modest women_.
If that were the case, we may be sure they would reject this
annihilation of their sisters for their benefit; but it is proved, on
the contrary, that _the insecurity of every woman_ results from the
prerogatives granted to vice in France. Are we not aware, that nations
which have not our monstrous measures of preservation, permit the girl
to go out, to travel, and live by herself, for the purpose of either the
secondary or the higher course of instruction; whilst in Paris more than
100,000 regulars and soldiers of the national guard, and a numerous body
of police, fail to inspire the young woman of the middle class with
sufficient confidence to allow her to venture a single step without a
protector, or the lower-class young woman with a security sufficient to
keep her from being made a merchantable article? Without even leaving
our territory, any one may be convinced, by comparison, that the
unprotected woman is so much the more respected in proportion as
profligacy has less of license. Charts of France have been made,
coloured more or less black according to the degree of instruction in
each of our “departments.” It would be easy to make such an one for
morality. It would demonstrate that the departments in which _the
machinery for morals_ is the most active, the most inquisitorial towards
the registered girl, are those in which a young girl who should have
committed the offence of walking out “unprotected” is no longer
marriageable.
Debauchery, driven from the street, would also be driven from cafés,
hotels, &c., otherwise than by laughter-moving and arbitrary regulations
against the “unprotected” woman. In this matter, then, we must further
substitute, for police rule, a general law to reach the real doers of
the evil, in the persons of those lodging-house keepers, tavern-keepers,
coffee-house proprietors, &c., who, by the greediest complicity, make
vice a matter of trade. But, alas! the law promulgated in 1778 alone
remained to us for dealing a blow at this abuse, and, after applying it
during the former half of the century, we declare it to be inapplicable
in the latter, without finding a substitute for it. Shall we profess
ourselves too much depraved to go back in this matter even to the
measures adopted by a reforming Government at the period of the greatest
decay of morals in our former monarchy?
The offence of treating for girls under age also demands a more severe
law. The uncertainty of the penalty, the feeble attempts to put down the
evil, as they appear when viewed with reference to the certainty of
immediate advantages to be gained by it, do not stop the agents of
procuration. The impunity assured to the person for whom the sale is
effected also gives to this kind of offences a deplorable frequency and
daring, in a country that punishes for a triple complicity, and by civic
degradation, the printer, author, and editor of writings whose offence
has sometimes been disseminating useful truths.
Profligacy driven from the public thoroughfares in this way, and from
establishments frequented by men without a home, the honour of the girl
under age being efficiently cared for, inexperienced youth will no
longer fall into the inextricable pitfalls of prostitution; no one but
the depraved man will, with the utmost caution, go into these sties of
infamy, to gratify a vicious propensity which would be left to its
natural consequences.
A community which sanctions the family principle should, further, spare
us the scandal of actions for debt and theft brought by the prostituter
against the prostituted. When our courts of law intervene to annul the
engagements which those above or those under age have contracted with
courtesans, it follows that these corrupters or these corrupted ones
have procured for themselves, by false pretences, on credit or for a
specific period, a gratification which the judge, as they have reason
for knowing, will take upon himself to make a gratuitous one, and that
their disgrace, which ought to close the ear of justice to their suits,
finds such privileges as to permit them to do a wrong to the tradesmen
who supply them with goods. Sound views will recognise the validity of
these debts, or, in annulling them, punish the complainant for the fact
of having prostituted himself; it is, above all, for cases such as these
that article 60 of our Criminal Code should be declared applicable,
thereby punishing _every individual who incites to profligacy by
presents_. Very much to the contrary, the application of the law becomes
deplorable in this matter; Lovelaces aged from 15 to 20, precocious Don
Juans, become villains with impunity by the assistance of the law’s
protection—spend some hundreds of thousands of francs in orgies, with
the certainty of committing robbery; they promise, give their
signatures, subscribe documents, and the court declares them white as
snow, provided they do not pay anything; and this is the education by
which we prepare young people for their life as citizens! What! is it to
be supposed that these young men, who to-morrow will be electors,
citizens, public officials, judges, magistrates perhaps, are not
capable, at the age of 19 and 20 years, of a greater moral
responsibility than the infant in long-clothes? Cancel their debts, if
you like; but at least brand them for their cynical attacks on the
fundamental laws of public propriety.
We must get rid of our confusion of principles with respect to those
young people who, separated from their family by their profession, are
entrusted to society. In the first place, in what has reference to the
soldier, patriotism and a feeling of true honour, would not give him up
to be corrupted by long years of inaction in garrison, and would not
permit any man to lead the life of a pig under cover of the flag of
France. Now that we are threatened with the corporal-instructor, we
ought, I think, to be permitted to know that his certificate of good
conduct has not compelled him to disavow his illegitimate children, nor
to denounce and imprison the victim guilty of having aimed a blow
against his security in debauchery.
As for that numerous body of civilian youths fighting on the
battle-field of life in schools, in public offices, workshops, commerce
and so forth, shall we leave them without a guide, to succumb to the
degradation of the companions of Ulysses? No; they must henceforward do
themselves honour by putting a curb on their passions and mastering
their excesses. It is the duty of us all to shew them, from the
commencement of their course, marked distinctions between the road to
honour and that to infamy by imposing obligatory limits to stop them in
bad courses. It is the right of moral families to know that the member
they wish to unite to them by marriage is a man, and not a living
carcase, sullied with all sorts of profligacy.
Let us then establish courts of honour to separate goodness from
evil—great associations which will confer distinction on themselves by
the morality they exact from their candidates and those whom they
employ, putting us thus upon the road of reformation.
Each of us has, in this matter, his work to accomplish, and we shall
succeed if we know how to be united in a common feeling. The law for
outrage on public morals would authorize us in a rebellion against our
administrative toleration of vice; all men of courage, claiming the
emancipation of destitution sold to profligacy, must likewise denounce
the shamelessness of those men who would, with one hand, punish the
freedom of the press while protecting the obscenity of the streets with
the other; who ill-use free-thinkers while they grant charters to free
livers. In what has reference to legislative repression Art. 334 of our
Criminal Law, joined to Art. 60, of which I have spoken, would be
sufficient for putting down the evil, if applied to direct profligacy,
especially in actions for debt and theft which debauchees bring against
their accomplices.
It is, nevertheless, to Art. 340 of our Civil Code that the guilty
complaisance of our interpretation of the law for profligate morals must
be attributed. The license into which the irresponsibility there laid
down hurries a great number of law students, greatly contributes to warp
their judgment in these suits, and to take from vice its last restraint.
Alas! shall we have the energy necessary for a real reform? We have
astonishingly perfected the physical sciences, and developed material
civilization; but we have so little advanced in the science of the law
and the duty which govern our connexions in society, our ambition is so
little excited for the development of human dignity, that we put our
frightful complaisance for debauchery under the patronage of St.
Augustine and St. Louis. Should we be willing to retrograde to such an
extent in the arts and mechanical processes—we who, in morals, dare to
take our ideal in pagan and barbarian society? When our Senate, some
years ago, discussed this grave question, it did not put the inquiry to
itself, whether seduction and irresponsible debauchery are the great
highways of public infamy; still less did it examine if despotic
centralization, which arbitrarily deprives the young girl of
professional instruction, and the woman of an honourable income, does
not at all contribute to her ruin. This Senate, _the guardian of
morals_, refrained from looking round within its own precincts, to see
if it were not, in any way, harbouring members whose example might
weaken the authority of its precepts; it did not seem to suspect that a
courtesan is the effect of a debauchee who pays for her, and it did not
at all wish to know if its sons were contributing to the evil: laying it
wholly upon the _luxuriousness of women_, it contented itself with some
pleasantries, and, far from opposing strong means of resistance to
profligacy, declared that Art. 484 of our Criminal Code sufficed for
putting down vice.[53] Almost immediately after this discussion, the
Asiatic pest, raging around us, threatened our physical existence. Oh!
then we became the champions of progress; we knew how to attack the evil
in its very source; our civilizing efforts were proposing to purify the
Ganges itself—the home of the epidemic: ordering inquiries, putting
sixteen questions to the meeting of the international conference at
Constantinople, we made an appeal to the enlightened intelligence of the
whole world. Why then does our energy fail in view of the plague of
public profligacy, more fatal to the moral life of a nation than is the
cholera-epidemic to its material life? Since we know the causes of the
evil, we deserve to be execrated if we do not look for wholesome means
of reaction—if authorities established to put it down continue to
protect it. The measures I am proposing, if they are examined by the
prismatic glass of history, reason, national and personal rights, are
the conditions of liberty and public decency. They will confine the evil
to the dregs of society.
When we are governed by a moral Code, the Family institution grounded on
morality and labour, will be able, without aid, to tread down the hydra
of debauchery, wallowing in the mire of idleness and licentiousness.
But, if justice and honour do not come out victorious from the present
struggle, woe, a thousand times woe, to the vanquished!