Personal Reminiscences of a Great Crusade
By JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER
_NEW EDITION_
DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF
SIR JAMES STANSFELD
LONDON
HORACE MARSHALL & SON
1910
BUTLER & TANNER
THE SELWOOD PRINTING WORKS
FROME AND LONDON
Introduction
Our long years of labour and conflict on behalf of this just cause,
ought not to be forgotten. A knowledge of, and a reverence for, the
principles for which we have striven ought to be kept alive, for these
principles are very far from being yet so clearly recognised as that our
children and our children’s children may not be called upon to rise
again and again in their defence.
SECOND EDITION, 1898.
The system that Mrs. Butler and her coadjutors so successfully combated
in England, still exists in various parts of the British Empire and of
the Continent of Europe, and in Japan and South America. Enactments
similar in principle also threaten from time to time this country and
the United States of America.
NEW EDITION, 1910.
Prefatory Biographical Note
A very charming _Autobiographical Memoir_ of Mrs. Butler has been edited
by George W. and Lucy A. Johnson, and may be obtained for 6_s._ through
any bookseller, or from the publishers, Arrowsmiths of Bristol, or
Simpkin Marshall of London. This memoir consists mainly of extracts from
Mrs. Butler’s published works. We are indebted to it for the following
facts:—
In an introduction to the Memoir in question, the Rt. Hon. James Stuart,
her warm personal friend, and fellow-worker for many years, thus
describes her personality: “She was at home in every class of society.
She was very beautiful, and of a very gracious presence, and the
impression made by first seeing her and hearing her voice has, I expect,
been forgotten by none who ever met her. She was of a very artistic
temperament. She was a good painter, an extremely good musician. She was
a bold rider, and active, though always of a somewhat weak health. Her
industry and application were unbounded. She was very full of humour,
and, while deeply in earnest, had the faculty of being at times
charmingly gay. She dressed with great taste and simplicity. She, above
all things, loved her home and her husband, and that love was wholly
returned. She was extremely cosmopolitan. At the same time she was a
great lover of her own country, and particularly of the borderland
between England and Scotland, where she was born, and where she now lies
buried in the churchyard of Kirknewton, where many of her ancestors lie.
For she came of an old Border family; and bravery, and the alertness of
battle, and the power of self-sacrifice, and the indignation against
wrong which characterized her, came to her, perhaps, partly through her
descent. She was a great reader of the Bible, and a humble suppliant
before the throne of God. But, while her own beliefs were clear and
definite, she had no narrowness in her views, and the very names of
those who have been her foremost supporters show how wide her sympathies
were, and how acceptable she was to people of all creeds, as well as of
all politics and all climes.”
Josephine Elizabeth Grey was born at Milfield Hill, in the county of
Northumberland, on April 13, 1828. She was the fourth daughter of John
Grey, and of his wife Hannah Annett. John Grey’s ancestors were wardens
of the East Marches, and Governors of Norham, Morpeth, Wark, and Berwick
Castles in the old Border days, from whom are also descended the
Tankervilles and the Greys in the House of Lords.
John Grey was appointed to the charge of the great Greenwich Hospital
Estates in Northumberland in 1833, and as a pioneer in the scientific
improvement of waste lands, turned it into a very valuable property.
Mrs. Butler says of this period, “Our home at Dilston was a very
beautiful one. Its romantic historical associations, the wild informal
beauty all round its doors, the bright, large family circle, and the
kind and hospitable character of its master and mistress, made it an
attractive place to many friends and guests. Among our pleasantest
visitors there were Swedes, Russians, and French, who came to England on
missions of agricultural or other enquiry, and who sometimes spent weeks
with us. It was a house the door of which stood wide open, as if to
welcome all comers, through the livelong summer day. It was a place
where one could glide out of a lower window and be hidden in a moment,
plunging straight amongst wild wood paths and beds of fern, or find
one’s self quickly in some cool concealment, beneath slender birch
trees, or by the dry bed of a mountain stream. It was a place where the
sweet hushing sound of waterfalls, and clear streams murmuring over
shallows, were heard all day and night, though winter storms turned
those sweet sounds into an angry roar.”
John Grey was a man of wide and deep sympathies, and besides being a
great influence for good in his own immediate neighbourhood, was a
personal friend and fellow-worker of Clarkson in the Abolition of the
Slave Trade. His daughter speaks of “his large benevolence, his tender
compassionateness, and his respect for the lights and liberties of the
individual man. His life,” she says, “was a sustained effort for the
good of others, flowing from these affections. He had no grudge against
rank or wealth, no restless desire for change for its own sake, still
less any rude love of demolition; but he could not endure to see
oppression or wrong of any kind inflicted on man, woman, or child. ‘You
cannot treat men and women exactly as you do one-pound notes, to be used
or rejected as you think proper,’ he said in a letter to _The Times_,
when that paper was advocating some ill-considered changes, beneficial
to one class, but leaving out of account a residue of humble folk upon
whom they would entail great suffering. In the cause of any maltreated
or neglected creature he was uncompromising to the last, and when
brought into opposition with the perpetrators of any social injustice he
became an enemy to be feared.”
Mrs. Butler’s mother was also a fine character, and warmly seconded the
efforts of her husband for the general good. She was descended from a
Huguenot family.
As Mrs. Butler grew into young womanhood the sad and tragical recitals
which came to the family from first sources of the wrongs inflicted by
slavery on negro men and women “broke,” she says, “her young heart,” and
keenly awakened her feelings, especially “concerning the injustice to
women through this conspiracy of greed and gold, and lust of the flesh,
a conspiracy which has its counterpart in the white slave-owning in
Europe.”
“For one long year of darkness,” she says, “the trouble of heart and
brain urged me to lay all this at the door of the God, whose name I had
learned was Love. I dreaded Him, I fled from Him, until grace was given
me to arise and wrestle, as Jacob did, with the mysterious Presence, who
must either slay or pronounce deliverance. And then the great
questioning again went up from earth to heaven, ‘God! Who art Thou?
Where art Thou? Why is it thus with the creatures of Thy hand?’ I fought
the battle alone, in deep recesses of the beautiful woods and pine
forests around our home, or on some lonely hill-side, among wild thyme
and heather, a silent temple where the only sounds were the plaintive
cry of the curlew, or the hum of a summer bee, or the distant bleating
of sheep. For hours and days and weeks in these retreats I sought the
answer to my soul’s trouble and the solution of its dark questionings.
Looking back, it seems to me the end must have been defeat and death had
not the Saviour imparted to the child-wrestler something of the virtue
of His own midnight agony, when in Gethsemane His sweat fell like great
drops of blood to the ground.”
The next stage in the preparation of Mrs. Butler for her great
world-wide work was her marriage in 1852 to a man of singularly noble
character, George Butler, son of the Dean of Peterborough. It was in
this year that the portrait was taken which appears on the cover of this
work. The first five years of their married life were spent at Oxford,
where Mr. Butler did important work in the University, as tutor,
examiner and lecturer. Here they met many leading people, and Mrs.
Butler says, “In the frequent social gatherings in our drawing-room in
the evenings there was much talk, sometimes serious and weighty,
sometimes light, interesting, critical, witty, and brilliant, ranging
over many subjects. It was then that I sat silent, the only woman in the
company, and listened, sometimes with a sore heart, for these men would
speak of things which I had already revolved deeply in my own mind,
things of which I was convinced, which I knew, though I had no
dialectics at command with which to defend their truth.
“Every instinct of womanhood within me was already in revolt against
certain accepted theories in society, and I suffered as only God and the
faithful companion of my life could ever know. Incidents occurred which
brought their contribution to the lessons then sinking into our hearts.
A young mother was in Newgate for the murder of her infant, whose
father, under cover of the deathlike silence prescribed by Oxford
philosophers, a silence which is in fact a permanent endorsement of
injustice, had perjured himself to her, had forsaken and forgotten her,
and fallen back, with no accusing conscience, on his easy social life,
and possibly his academic honours. I wished to go and speak to her in
the prison of the God who saw the injustice done, and who cared for her.
My husband suggested that we should write to the chaplain of Newgate,
and ask him to send her to us when her sentence had expired. We wanted a
servant, and he thought that she might be able to fill that place. She
came to us. I think she was the first of the world of unhappy women of a
humble class whom he welcomed to his own home. She was not the last.”
In 1857 Mr. Butler accepted the post of Vice-Principal of Cheltenham
College. Here Mrs. Butler met with a terrible trial in the sudden death
by accident, of her only little daughter Evangeline, in the year 1864.
This was followed by a long period of darkness and intense depression of
spirits, which was only dispelled by visiting amongst the four thousand
poor women in the jails and workhouses of Liverpool, where she sat
amongst them and picked oakum, until she gained their confidence. Her
husband had previously taken the Principalship of Liverpool College,
following the celebrated Dr. Howson, who vacated it to take the position
of Dean of Chester. The result of her work here was, she says, “to draw
down upon my head an avalanche of miserable, but grateful womanhood.”
She first of all filled the basement and attics of her house with “as
many as possible of the most friendless girls who were anxious to make a
fresh start.” This becoming inconvenient, a “House of Rest” was started,
which continued for many years, and was finally taken over by the town
as a municipal institution.
1864 was the date of the commencement of the last stage of the
preparation of Mrs. Butler for her great life-work of attacking and
undermining the world-wide evil of State regulated vice. 1864 was
likewise the date of the introduction of State regulated vice into
England, which was the last of the countries of Europe to adopt it, as
it was also the first, in 1886, to abolish it. Mrs. Butler’s part in the
great Abolitionist Struggle is detailed in the following pages in her
own words.
Mrs. Butler lived the last few years of her life at Wooler, near
Milfield, the place of her birth. There she died peacefully in her
sleep, on December 30, 1906, and was buried in the churchyard at
Kirknewton, where many of her ancestors had been buried.
The editors of her biography conclude, “Surely we may say of her, but
very slightly altering the words of Bunyan: As she drew nigh unto the
beautiful gate of the City, she asked, ‘What must I do in the Holy
Place?’ and the shining ones answered, ‘Thou must there receive the
comfort of all thy toil, and have joy for all thy sorrow; thou must reap
what thou hast sown, even the fruit of all thy prayers and tears, and
suffering for the King by the way. There also thou shalt serve Him
continually, whom thou desiredst to serve in the world, though with much
difficulty because of the infirmity of thy flesh. There thine eyes shall
be delighted with seeing, and thine ears with hearing, the pleasant
voice of the Mighty One. There thou shalt enjoy thy friends again, that
are gone thither before thee; and there thou shalt with joy receive even
every one that follows into the Holy Place after thee.’ As she entered
in at the gate, then I heard in my dream that all the bells in the City
rang again for joy, and that it was said unto her, ‘Enter thou into the
joy of thy Lord.’”
CHAPTER I
ORIGIN OF THE SYSTEM OF STATE REGULATION OF VICE
“Our fathers to their graves have gone,
Their strife is past—their triumph won;
But sterner trials wait the race
Which rises in their honoured place—
A moral warfare with the crime
And folly of an evil time.”
“So let it be. In God’s own might
We gird us for the coming fight,
And, strong in Him whose cause is ours,
In conflict with unholy powers,
We grasp the weapons He has given—
The light, and truth, and love of Heaven.”
The late Professor Emile de Laveleye, at our International Conference at
the Hague, in September, 1883, gave some account of the inauguration of
this system, which took its rise in France under the auspices of
Napoleon I. The system was first suggested by Aulas in 1762, and by
Restif de la Bretonne in 1790. It was brought into full operation on the
eve of the establishment of the French Empire in 1802. “It could only
have had its birth,” said Professor de Laveleye, “at a period of
disturbance, when the rights of human dignity and individual liberty
were forgotten or misunderstood. History, in recounting the saturnalia
of vice in Asia Minor, in Greece, and especially in Imperial Rome,
narrates horrors which cause us to shudder. But never, either in Rome,
or in Athens, or even in Corinth, was the spectacle witnessed of public
abodes of shame kept open by the State. Juvenal paints Messalina gliding
thither under cover of night. But even Heliogabalus never constituted
himself their patron as nowadays do the Municipal and State authorities
of our Christian communities in the full sunshine of the 19th century.”
Then the same accomplished speaker, in a very forcible address, showed
what the legalising of vice has been and has produced in all those
nations which, following the example of France, have adopted it. “It has
been the source of profound disorders, both moral and physical: of moral
disorders, by destroying the aversion which vice should inspire, and
thereby strengthening its power; of physical disorders, by exciting
incontinence, and all its concurrent evils, with proffered facilities
and promises of immunity.”
I shall have occasion later to draw attention to the different dates and
methods in which this system was introduced into the several countries
of Europe. England was the last country in which it found a foothold.
When, in 1872, I was summoned to give evidence before a Royal Commission
to inquire into this question, I stated on the authority of Mrs. Harriet
Martineau and other venerable writers and politicians, a fact which has
never been contradicted in any way, _i.e._, than an attempt was made
during the Melbourne Ministry to introduce this Parisian system into
England. It was deemed impossible, however, to place such an Act of
Parliament in the hands of a young virgin Queen for signature, and the
attempt was dropped. There was a renewed endeavour during the life of
the Prince Consort, but this was also abandoned, from the knowledge that
was obtained of the Prince’s distinct disapproval of this Continental
system. Prince Albert died, and it was during the first year of Queen
Victoria’s widowhood, when she was presumably absorbed in her private
grief, that the promoters of this system in England succeeded in pushing
an Act through Parliament, and obtaining for it the Royal signature.
There were four Acts; the first, tentative, in 1864. This was repealed
when the Act of 1866 was passed, and this, after verbal amendment in
1868, was still further extended by the Act of 1869. This last Act was
not allowed much peace, for it was in the autumn of the same year that
the opposition arose; in fact, a powerful protest had been raised
shortly before the passing of this complete Act. Mrs. Harriet Martineau,
with all the shrewdness and enlightenment of a true woman and an able
politician, had seen the tendency of a certain busy medical and military
clique in this direction. The then editor of the _Daily News_, who was
favourable to our views, asked Mrs. Martineau to write a series of
letters in his paper. This she did, and her letters are extremely
weighty, and wonderful to read at this day, when we have an immense
accumulation of evidence to support her and our views, which she, of
course, did not possess. Her advice on this matter concerning our army
is admirable. Speaking of our poor soldiers, she says:—“But while
favouring the element of brutality in him (the soldier), we had not need
go further and assume in practice that his animalism is a necessity
which must be provided for. This is the fatal step which it is now hoped
that the English Parliament and the English people may be induced to
take. If the soldier is more immoral than his contemporaries of the
working class, it must be because the standard of morality is lower in
the army than out of it. Shall we then raise it to what we clearly see
it might be, or degrade it further by a practical avowal that vice is in
the soldier’s case a necessity to be provided for, like his need of food
and clothing? This admission of the necessity of vice is the point on
which the whole argument turns, and on which irretrievable consequences
depend. Once admitted, the necessity of a long series of fearful evils
follows of course. There can be no resistance to seduction, procuration,
disease, regulation, _when once the original necessity is granted_.
Further, the admission involves civil as well as military society, and
starts them together on the road which leads down to what moralists of
all ages and nations have called the lowest hell.... It is a national
disgrace that our people should have even been asked to regard and treat
their soldiers and sailors as pre-destined fornicators.” And in another
of her letters to the _Daily News_ Mrs. Martineau, writing of her
experience of Continental cities, said: “There is evidence accessible to
all that the Regulation System creates horrors worse than those which it
is supposed to restrain. Vice once stimulated by such a system imagines
and dares all unutterable things. And such things perplex with misery
the lives of parents of missing children in Continental cities, and
daunt the courage of rulers, and madden the moral sense, and gnaw the
conscience of whole orders of sinners and sufferers, of whom we can form
no conception here. We shall have entered upon our national decline
whenever we agree to the introduction of such a system.”
We, the women of England, were not the first to arise in opposition to
this iniquity. For at least fifteen years before our call to the work,
warning lights had been held out from time to time by persons or
societies who thoroughly knew the system, and dreaded the disastrous
effects for our country of its establishment in our midst.
A group of Baptist and other Nonconformist Ministers, in which my
relative, the late Charles Birrell, took a leading part, early went to
the Government, conveying an earnest warning and protest on the subject.
I cannot fix the exact date of this event; but I have a vivid
recollection of the account of it given to me by Mr. Birrell. I believe
it was during the Administration of Lord John Russell.
In 1860 a Committee of the House of Lords sat to consider the question
of introducing the Acts for the regulation of vice into India, or
establishing a more complete form of Acts already existing there. The
majority of the witnesses examined by that Committee were wholly opposed
to the system. Miss Florence Nightingale was one of those witnesses. Her
recorded evidence and expression of opinion are lengthy, and exactly
what we might expect from a true-hearted and an experienced woman. Lord
Frederick FitzClarence, Commander-in-Chief of the forces in India, said
that “after giving the whole subject his best attention, he concurred
with his predecessors in command of the army in believing that police
measures of the kind in question could not be carried on without
involving the certain degradation and oppression of many innocent women,
and occasioning other evils which, in his opinion, would be very much
greater than that which it was their object to remedy.” Dr. Grierson (of
the Indian Army) said that when the natives of India saw the authorities
making such careful provision for the protection of immoral persons, and
at the same time doing little for the good of the other classes, they
were “sorely perplexed.” General Jacob said: “The proper and only wise
method of dealing with this question is to improve the condition and
moral well-being of the army. Coercion of any kind always increases the
evil. Moral forces alone are of any value.”
A third strong protest was that of the officers of the Rescue Society in
London. They made a series of very strong efforts against the threatened
introduction of the regulation system.
The late Mr. Daniel Cooper, the well-known and respected Secretary of
the Rescue Society, wrote to me in 1870: “You ask me to tell you what
the Rescue Society did to bring this infamous legislation under public
notice. In 1868 we published a pamphlet and waited on the Home
Secretary. With the pamphlet we presented a copy of a ‘Memorandum of
Objections’ to this legislation. This Memorandum was circulated by
thousands. We placed it in the hands of every member of both Houses of
Parliament; we forwarded it to all the principal clergy of the
Metropolis and other important towns in England, and also to the leading
Nonconformist ministers. We spent more than £100 in the circulation of
our papers, and with what result? I am ashamed to say that very little
effect was produced. The utmost apathy prevailed; people would not
believe our words and would not stir. The infamous Act of 1869 was
passed in spite of all our efforts.
“At this crisis we learned that the _Women_ of England were taking this
question in hand. We were rejoiced beyond measure when we saw the
announcement of your Ladies’ National Association.
“I tell you candidly I had felt an almost utter despair in seeing that,
after putting forth our pamphlet, and writing thousands of letters,
imploring our legislators, clergy, principal public men and
philanthropists to look into the question, such a stoical indifference
remained. We felt, on hearing of your Association, that Providence had
well chosen the means for the defeat of these wicked Acts. The ladies of
England will save the country from this fearful curse; for I fully
believe that through them it has even now had its death blow. The men
who charge the ladies foremost in the struggle with indelicacy are not
worthy the name of men. As to our Members of Parliament, pray do not
excuse their ignorance; do not try to palliate their error by saying the
Act was passed at the fag end of the session. The papers placed in their
hands by ourselves, the letters of warning we addressed to them, leave
them no excuse. Knowing, as none but ourselves can know, what was done
to arouse them, I cannot but conclude that, with a few honourable
exceptions, our Members of Parliament cared nothing about the matter
until public opinion forced them to look into it. But for the Ladies’
National Association we should have had no discussion, and the Acts
would by this date have probably been extended throughout the country. I
say this solemnly, and from an intimate knowledge of all the plans of
the Association formed to extend these Acts. Go on; give the country no
rest till this law is abolished.—Yours truly, DANIEL COOPER.”
The names of Dr. Charles Bell Taylor and Dr. Worth, of Nottingham, must
be gratefully remembered, for it was to those gentlemen that we, the
women of England, owed our first clear information of the nature and the
passing of the Act of 1869. I had been on the Continent with my family
in that year, and had been learning much there concerning the disastrous
effects of this system. On the journey home I found a telegram awaiting
me at Dover, begging an interview, and this was followed by a somewhat
mysterious appeal from these alert friends at Nottingham to “haste to
the rescue.” In a few days the whole state of the case was put before me
and a small group of friends. No organised action, however, was taken by
us until the close of December of that year. In fact, there was much
preparation of heart, nerve, and mind necessary for such a task as was
now opening out before us. It was not a thing to be taken up hastily.
Meanwhile, in September of this same year (1869), some other watchful
friends had taken occasion of the Social Science Congress meeting at
Bristol to introduce again a strong warning note, or rather now a
protest, against the legislation in question. The Rev. Dr. Hooppell, of
Northumberland, Mr. George Charleton, of the Society of Friends, and Mr.
Banks, afterwards for so many years the able and indefatigable secretary
of the National Association, proved themselves on this occasion already
well-armed and staunch advocates of the abolition movement, of which
they themselves were amongst the earliest initiators. They formed there
a local association, which was afterwards merged into the National
Association, which had its office in London.
I have already, in the “Recollections of George Butler,” recorded
sufficiently my own and my husband’s first call to this great work, the
inward preparation for which had been going on for many years
previously. I have spoken there of the horror, the dismay we felt on the
first full knowledge that this iniquity had been established by law in
England, of the weeks of self-questioning and hesitation which followed
for myself, of the tardy but firm resolution at last formed to imitate,
if I may use the simile, the example of Quintus Curtius of old Roman
fame, and to leap into this yawning gulf in order that the nation’s
wound might close again. But this Roman hero, I had read, met his fate
fully equipped, armed from head to foot, fearless, and in the perfection
of self-renunciation. I felt that, for such an enterprise, I should
require nothing less than “the whole armour of God.” I have recorded
also in that hook the noble and unselfish part which my husband took
from the beginning in this warfare; and to some extent I there also
indicated the sacrifices he made, and the anxieties he silently endured
for many years, after he had spoken to me that momentous word (to me a
consecration for the work), “Go, and the Lord be with you.”
This word was spoken after we had conferred fully together on the action
we should adopt, and after our conclusion that we must make an immediate
appeal to the great public.
Many persons, honestly judging the matter from the outside, have
mistakenly imagined that the persecution which had to be endured, the
ridicule by which we were constantly assailed in the Press, the social
ostracism, the coldness of many who had before been friends and
companions, the obloquy, false accusations, abuse and violence,
continued for years, must have been the greatest of the trials incident
to the part we were called to take in so dreadful an enterprise. So far
as my own experience bears witness, those who judge so are mistaken.
These things were for me light and easy to bear in comparison with the
deep and silent sorrow, the bitterness of soul of the years which
preceded. I recall those years of painful thinking, and of questionings
which seemed to receive no answer and to be susceptible of no solution;
those years in which I saw this great social iniquity (based on the
shameful inequality of judgment concerning sexual sin in man and woman)
devastating the world, contentedly acquiesced in, no great revolt
proclaimed against it, a dead silence reigning concerning it, a voice
feebly raised perhaps now and again, but quickly rebuked and silenced.
The call to action, the field of battle entered, with all its perils and
trials clearly set out before us, were a joyful relief, a place of free
breathing, compared with the oppression and the heart-woe which went
before.
Those alone who have trod the silent and secret “way of Calvary” will
fully understand me. Those who have not may well think the discipline of
being traduced, slandered, threatened, and “spitefully entreated” a very
hard discipline. But one who has endured the deeper and keener spiritual
discipline, when there seemed no escape, no ray of hope, must regard the
outward persecution and violence only as a welcome sign that the battle
is set in array, and that the enemy is roused to bitterest hatred
because his claims are disputed and his sovereignty is about to be
overthrown. The inward sorrow I believe to have been necessary for the
vitalising of righteous action, and the insuring of depth, reality and
constancy.
On the 1st January, 1870, was published the famous Women’s Protest, as
follows:
“We, the undersigned, enter our solemn protest against these Acts.
“1st.—Because, involving as they do such a momentous change in the legal
safeguards hitherto enjoyed by women in common with men, they have been
passed, not only without the knowledge of the country, but unknown, in a
great measure, to Parliament itself; and we hold that neither the
Representatives of the People, nor the Press, fulfil the duties which
are expected of them, when they allow such legislation to take place
without the fullest discussion.
“2nd.—Because, so far as women are concerned, they remove every
guarantee of personal security which the law has established and held
sacred, and put their reputation, their freedom, and their persons
absolutely in the power of the police.
“3rd.—Because the law is bound, in any country professing to give civil
liberty to its subjects, to define clearly an offence which it punishes.
“4th.—Because it is unjust to punish the sex who are the victims of a
vice, and leave unpunished the sex who are the main cause, both of the
vice and its dreaded consequences; and we consider that liability to
arrest, forced medical treatment, and (where this is resisted)
imprisonment with hard labour, to which these Acts subject women, are
punishments of the most degrading kind.
“5th.—Because, by such a system, the path of evil is made more easy to
our sons, and to the whole of the youth of England; inasmuch as a moral
restraint is withdrawn the moment the State recognises, and provides
convenience for, the practice of a vice which it thereby declares to be
necessary and venial.
“6th.—Because these measures are cruel to the women who come under their
action—violating the feelings of those whose sense of shame is not
wholly lost, and further brutalising even the most abandoned.
“7th.—Because the disease which these Acts seek to remove has never been
removed by any such legislation. The advocates of the system have
utterly failed to show, by statistics or otherwise, that these
regulations have in any case, after several years’ trial, and when
applied to one sex only, diminished disease, reclaimed the fallen, or
improved the general morality of the country. We have, on the contrary,
the strongest evidence to show that in Paris and other Continental
cities where women have long been outraged by this system, the public
health and morals are worse than at home.
“8th.—Because the conditions of this disease, in the first instance, are
moral, not physical. The moral evil through which the disease makes its
way separates the case entirely from that of the plague, or other
scourges, which have been placed under police control or sanitary care.
We hold that we are bound, before rushing into experiments of legalising
a revolting vice, to try to deal with the _causes_ of the evil, and we
dare to believe that with wiser teaching and more capable legislation,
those causes would not be beyond control.”
This Protest was published in the _Daily News_, and the fact of its
appearance was flashed by telegram to the remotest parts of the Kingdom.
The local press largely reproduced it. Among the two thousand signatures
which it obtained in a short time there were those of Florence
Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Mary Carpenter, the sisters and other
relatives of the late Mr. John Bright, all the leading ladies of the
Society of Friends, and many well-known in the literary and
philanthropic world.
A pause ensued, a silence on the part of our opponents and undecided or
critical lookers on, induced by the first shock of this unexpected and
powerful manifesto. A member of Parliament, fully sympathetic with us,
said to me: “Your manifesto has shaken us very badly in the House of
Commons; a leading man in the House remarked to me, ‘We know how to
manage any other opposition in the House or in the country, but this is
very awkward for us—this revolt of the women. It is quite a new thing;
what are we to do with such an opposition as this?’”
But this temporary pause was succeeded by signs of much agitation and
business among our opponents in preparation for an organised stand
against our attitude and claims; and simultaneously was inaugurated the
great “Conspiracy of Silence” in the press, which continued unbroken
until the autumn of 1874, when a well-known Ex-Cabinet Minister spoke
powerfully at a public meeting on our behalf. After this one occasion,
however, the press, as if by common consent, fell back into its old
attitude of silence. This silence could not be in most cases attributed
to a regard for the feelings of readers, for statements in favour of the
Acts were continually admitted. We had, however, great encouragement
from many and often unexpected parts of the world.
Many persons on the Continent, working for social reforms, were even
then rejoicing in the trumpet-blast which had been sounded from England,
in open opposition to this vicious system. We had inaugurated a line of
action to the continuance of which we were pledged by sacred duty in
regard to the hopes which it had awakened throughout Europe.
Amongst the reforms which, it was hoped, would be aided by the present
agitation was one connected with the army, in the substitution of some
better system of national defence than that of a military army of
celibates, kept as a distinct class, and demoralized by unnatural
provisions, supposed to be needful for their exceptional existence.
The purification of the medical profession was also hoped for, and the
exposure and defeat of those deadly materialist doctrines respecting the
necessity of unchastity, which had been secretly and widely promulgated,
and which, together with the dogmatism and despotism of certain doctors,
had begun to exercise so fatal an influence over our legislative
counsels. The condition of the womanhood of our country for some time
past we often compared with that of the afflicted woman of whom we read
in the Gospels, of whom it was said, “She had endured many things of
many physicians,” and that she grew no better, but rather worse. The
afflicted woman alluded to, approaching the person of the great
Spiritual Physician, was healed by the touch of faith. A similar faith
was coming to the succour of the womanhood of the present day. Their
hearts were lifted up to God, with whom are the issues of life and
death, and they were taught to scorn the perversions of physicians who,
in the supposed interests of the body, trampled under foot the claims of
decency and the inalienable rights of every woman, chaste or unchaste,
over her own person. God would henceforth, we trusted, place His gifts
of healing in holy hands, and say to the poor afflicted womanhood of
this day, “Daughter, be of good cheer.”
The purification we hoped for was already indicated by the fact that,
among the men who gradually rallied around us in this cause, from all
ranks and all professions, pure-hearted physicians were among the
foremost, both in action and in indignant denunciation of the theories
and practices which we abhorred.
Not many weeks after the publication of our Protest, Mr. Gladstone, then
Prime Minister, received a Memorial from women of Geneva on the subject;
a beautiful and distinct echo from afar of our own cry for justice.
Even earlier than this, more than one sympathetic voice reached us from
Paris itself, the birthplace of the evil thing against which we were
allied.
Victor Hugo wrote:—
“PARIS, _March 20, 1870_.
“I am with you, madame and ladies. I am with you to the fullest extent
of my power. In reading your eloquent letter, I have felt a burning
sympathy rise in me for the feeble, and a corresponding indignation
against the oppressor. France is apparently about to borrow from England
an evil institution, that of chamber executions—legal murders done
behind closed doors; and, in her turn, England prepares to adopt from
France a detestable system, that, namely, of a police dealing with women
as outlaws. Protest! resist! show your indignation! All noble hearts and
all lofty spirits will be on your side. The slavery of black women is
abolished in America, but the slavery of white women continues in
Europe; and laws are still made by men in order to tyrannise over women.
Nothing more hateful could be seen than the sight to-day—France copying
the feudalism of England, and England reproducing the medical tyranny of
Paris. It is a rivalry of retrogression—a miserable spectacle. It
disgraces justice in France, and the Executive power in England. Publish
this letter if you think fit, and be assured of my earnest sympathy and
respect.
“VICTOR HUGO.”
From Mazzini, to a member of our Ladies’ Association:—
“ITALY, _February, 1870_.
“MY DEAR FRIEND,—
“Can you doubt me? Can you doubt how eagerly I watch from afar, and how
heartily I bless the efforts of the brave, earnest British women who are
striving for the extension of the suffrage to their sex and for the
repeal of the vice-protecting Acts, which last question is but an
incident in the great general question of justice to women?
“Is your question less sacred than that of the abolition of slavery in
America, or of serfdom elsewhere? Ought it not to be even more sacred to
us—in reverence for our mothers,—and if we remember that the most
important period of human life—the first—is entrusted to women?
“Are not all questions of equality mere baseless rebellion, unless they
are derived from an all-embracing religious principle? and is not that
principle—(the oneness of the human family)—the soul of your country’s
religion?
“Have the men who deny the righteousness of your claims abjured that
religion, or forgotten the holy words of Jesus and of Paul:—
“‘Neither pray I for these alone, but for them also which shall believe
on Me through the Word.’
“‘That they all may be one; as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee,
that they also may be one in us.’—John xvii. 20, 21.
“‘For ye are all the children of God by faith in Christ Jesus.’
“‘There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there
is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.’—Epistle
Galatians iii. 26, 28.
“Do they tell you these words apply to heaven? Ask them Who has taught
them to pray that _God’s will be done on earth as it is in heaven_?
“No question such as yours ought to be solved without asking _how far
does the proposed solution minister to the moral education of society_?
The sense of self-dignity, the deep conviction that each of us has a
task to fulfil on earth, for our own improvement and that of our
fellow-creatures, is the first step in all education. We are bound to
start by teaching all whom we seek to educate the words you quoted; _you
are a human being: nothing that concerns mankind is alien to you_. If
you crush in man his innate sense of self-respect, you decree the helot.
If you sanction moral inequality to any extent, you either create
rebellion, with all its evils, or indifference, hypocrisy and
corruption. If you punish the accomplice, leaving the sinner untouched,
you destroy, by arousing the sense of injustice, every beneficial result
of punishment. If you assume the right to legislate for any class,
without allowing that class voice or share in the work, you destroy the
sacredness of law, and awaken hatred or contempt in the heart of the
excluded class.
“In these simple obvious principles lies the justice of your claims.
“In this legislation lies—forget it not—the germ of a moral disease far
more terrible than the physical evil they thus brutally and impotently
endeavour to ‘stamp out’; this first step backwards, taken in selfish
fear, will, if not speedily retraced, be followed by others, until the
moral sore neglected will become a cancer infecting the very life-blood
of your nation.
“In the moral principles I have stated you will conquer. Your cause is a
religious one. Do not narrow it down to what is called a right or an
interest. Let duty be your ground, both in protecting your unhappy
sisters and in urging your political claims. You are children of God.
You have the same duty to perform on earth—the progressive discovery and
the progressive fulfilment of His law. You cannot renounce that task
without sinning against the God who appointed it, and gave to you, as to
us, faculties and powers for its accomplishment.
“You cannot fulfil your task without _liberty_, which is the source of
responsibility. You cannot fulfil it without _equality_, which is
liberty for each and all.
“Your claim to the suffrage is identical with that of the working men.
Like them, you seek to bring a new element of progress to the common
work; you feel that you, too, have something to say, not merely
indirectly, but legally and officially, with regard to the great
problems which stir and torture the soul of mankind.
“As for the special cause of which you write, the repeal of these
hideous Acts, you will succeed. You have in your House of Commons men
whom surely no giant despair of physical disease can turn aside from the
straight path of principle and justice; but even if these should fail
you, which I do not believe, you have your people. Your working men have
shown us, during the Lancashire famine, how _they_ can feel for the
down-trodden and oppressed. Appeal to them. I have lived long enough in
England to know what their answer would be.
“_I am, Dear Friend, Yours_,
“GIUSEPPE MAZZINI.”