Address, delivered in Craigie Hall, Edinburgh, February 24th, 1871

by Josephine Elizabeth Grey Butler

But I must here point out very emphatically that the Contagious 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 endeavour to reinstate every criminal who has endured his legal punishment. The element, which I have tried to indicate, embodied 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 proletariate class in ancient Rome 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 legislation, but it is impossible not to be struck with the fact that this Bill, the “Habitual Drunkards Bill,” and others which I have mentioned have not in them one particle of prevention. These Acts of Parliament assume that we are to acquiesce in the present state of England as its normal state; they assume that we are to continue to have so many thousands of paupers, so many thousands of habitual criminals, of outcast women, of drunkards, &c., &c. Measures for dealing with these classes as they now exist may be necessary; but, while they are enacted, common sense requires, and surely the country will demand, that measures for preventing these enormous evils shall at least keep pace with measures for regulating them. A measure, for instance, is passed for licensing baby-farming, and for punishing infanticide, but nothing is done to increase the responsibility of the fathers of illegitimate children, and the seducers of girls who are minors are still left unpunished by law. Little or nothing has yet been done to lessen the temptations to drunkenness, while expensive provision is to be made for those who have become confirmed in that vice.

Now the spirit of the teaching of Christ is the very opposite of that which animates so much of this legislation. It is said of God, “He giveth liberally and upbraideth not;” but man gives grudgingly, upbraiding all the time. The Christian religion teaches that we shall forgive a fallen brother not once but many times, and that forgiveness shall be practically proved by granting an open path to recovery, that it shall not be a forgiveness followed by perpetual espionage, suspicion, and the ban of society fastened upon the once fallen for the rest of their lives. I am not insisting that the Christian rule is to be followed out to the letter in penal legislation, but I maintain that legislation which violently adopts principles the very opposite of Christian comes from an evil source, and will be followed by disastrous consequences.

The principle of arbitrary compulsion embodied in some of our sanatory Acts is fraught with danger. The medical and sanatory measures embodied in such Acts may in themselves be excellent, but they are for the most part grounded on opinion only—the opinion sometimes of a mere clique,—which opinion has none of the authority of those eternal principles of right and wrong which are written within the human conscience. Wherefore, by the creation of a multitude of technical crimes through the multiplication of these compulsory-sanatory and other Acts, the criminal class is enormously increased, and to some extent the mind is demoralised, while the body may or may not be kept in health. The forcible doctoring of the people, whether they will or no, is, as a matter of mere policy, a most dangerous experiment. The magisterial powers now granted to State doctors, the amount of domiciliary visitation already legalised for police and medical men, to which the families of the poor have to submit, are not likely to make the people in love with the laws, or to induce in them a readiness to help their operation; and if the people at large do not cheerfully help the action of any law, that law must come to end either by dying a natural death or by revolution. Much sullenness and revengefulness are even now being bred in the minds of large sections of our working men by the action of some of these stringent criminal-making laws; whereas it should be the policy of a wise government to secure the co-operation of this vast and powerful portion of our population in the maintenance of law and order.

There is another evil incidental to the enforcement of these multiplied enactments which are now so rapidly following one another. All these laws are administered by the central authority, which, from London, stretches its hand over the vast populations of our great cities. This gradually increasing centralisation overrides municipal authority, represses corporate freedom, and tends to deaden and stupefy the political life and self-governing power of our great provincial capitals. The local self-government of our country has ever been the object of the admiration of thoughtful foreigners, who attribute to it much of the manly character, the respect for law, and the readiness of resource in emergencies which characterise our countrymen. But all these things are struck at by this threatening imperialism, which works the ruin of corporate freedom as much as that of individual virtue and liberty, by treating the subject as a mere child or chattel, and imposing a uniform rule upon all alike.

The new forthcoming Sanatory Bill is one which ought to be jealously watched by the people. It seems likely to involve uniformity of prescription in matters where such uniformity is least wise, and where the power of self-regulation is most wholesome, as well as to increase the magisterial powers of State doctors to an extent hitherto unknown.

The influence of women and their faith in the recoverability of human nature are needed in these legislative matters. Our male legislators are apt to ride rough-shod over us in matters of domestic detail. Their heavy-handed legislation is applied now not only to matters of imperial interest, but to everything which most nearly concerns our conscience and feelings. It seems to me that we women shall soon have to fight for the last inch of ground left us;—not for our civil rights only, but for our hearths, our homes, our beds, our babies, our very persons. The crudeness of intellect of some of our young male legislators needs to be corrected by the wisdom of the thoughtful matrons of England. A young M.P. said to me lately, “We shall do no good at all until we make poverty a crime; disease is already made a crime in some cases, and poverty ought to be so also.” I did not answer him, but in my heart I said, “Thou fool!”

Such are some of the dangers before us. It has lately been suggested by several gentlemen who are alive to this subject, that it may be desirable and necessary to form some sort of a Covenant or League, of a wide and national character, for the protection of freedom and virtue as its general object, and in particular to observe vigilantly, and examine strictly, every proposal and act of the legislature, especially such as emanate from certain favoured cliques or professions, and to secure that nothing passes into law which has not the sanction of the whole nation, marked by open debate in Parliament, and by a majority of votes in a House where there is more than a mere fraction of members present. It has been suggested that no penal measures, involving extensive interference with the liberty of the subject, or measures sanctioning the erection of new tribunals for the assigning of grave and terrible penalties, shall in future be enacted except where two-thirds, or at least some reasonably large proportion of the House are present. It is a rule, in many private and public associations, that no grave or important changes or measures shall be made or enacted except in the presence of a very large proportion of the members, constituting a quorum. It would surely be a very right and natural demand on the part of the people of England (with the warning they have now before their eyes of the secret passing of the Contagious Diseases Acts) that Parliament should never again make any great change in our penal code, or infringe upon constitutional principles, in the name of sanitary improvements, medical necessities, or any other thing, except by means of such a parliamentary quorum as would satisfy the nation.

Any national league, such as has been suggested, for the defence of the constitution, of liberty, and of morality, would of course be composed both of men and women. Women are becoming rapidly educated in all these matters, and their vigilance would naturally exceed even that of men, for most of these threatening tyrannies fall first, if not exclusively, on women and children.

I know not what work God may have in store for us, dear friends, but this I know, that it is not for any small end that He has called our Association together, a mighty band throughout the kingdom, united with one heart in the presence of a common danger. He has not called up all these rapidly-formed and grave friendships, this loving co-operation and powerful mutual help, for any end or aim inadequate to so great an instrument. I believe that the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Act, which is our immediate object, is only a small part of the work He has designed for us. I know not what that work may be; but this is sure, that God knows and that he is guiding us. I believe that the materialism of the day and the principle which opposes that materialism are about to meet and to try their strength in a deadly encounter, and that we have a great and holy work before us. We must be filled with high courage, hope, and stern resolve. Think what a machinery we have now for work! Our branch societies, our local secretaries, our power of concentration on a given point at a given moment, our organisation generally, resembles a great telegraphic system which is a swift and formidable power. But our power is not in the machinery; it is in the living principle which runs like lightning through this great telegraphic system.