Turn, inhuman destroyer!—take the last look at your heart-bleeding victim before you leave her to utter destruction. If a spark of honour, of even self-regard, lurk yet among your base unbridled passions, pause for a moment,—let recollection flash on the youthful days of your amiable wife;—such a villain as you have now become would have separated her life from yours:—You have daughters—cast a father’s look on them, and judge from your own feelings, if a father’s feelings can be yours, what you must have inflicted, in the disgrace of that ruined girl, who, now fallen and by you debased, clings around your feet, upon the hearts of a peaceful, respectable, and hitherto happy family.
Can this man make any recompense for his barbarous crime? He titles as a Lord; but vain are his immense treasures, his glittering equipages, to restore her lost innocence: no—no effort of his can sooth the remorse of her whom his guilt has made so miserable. Poor is the refuge from a worrying conscience, in the thought that ample provision has been made for the sorrower’s support, whose early death will relieve her at once from his odious bounty and her intolerable misery.
Endless as distressing would be the undertaking to particularize the detestable variety of iniquity thus practised; or to enumerate all the suicides, child-murders, and secret crimes which hence originate, in all their turpitude. Of this one deplorable fact I have had assurance in the case of the female convicts late under my care on board the Morley, who invariably acknowledged, when on the subject of their misfortunes, that seduction first led the way to guilt, and that the baneful career in which the sentence of the law had arrested them, might be decidedly dated from the fatal moment of their fall from virtue.
To arrest the progress of female prostitution, various expedients and measures have been proposed, and as numerous arguments urged in favour of their efficacy. The most ingenious British writer on the subject seems to be Dr. Colquhoun, whose zealous labours have long indeed been meritoriously directed to his country’s benefit. While his active vigilance has in many cases been successfully devoted to the investigation and repression of crime, his opinions in the main are correct and luminous.
In the remedy, however, which he proposes for female prostitution, his love of police system appears to me to have carried him beyond his depth, further perhaps than he intended. The measure he recommends is modestly covered by a few superficial, ingenious arguments, but, when divested of this learned covering, presents an appearance not very satisfactory to an English eye, and to that of stern virtue is even truly frightful—granting to prostitutes legal licenses!
The learned Doctor first endeavours to soften the scruples of his timid readers by argument both speculative and specious; after which he gravely asks, “Where then is the objection?” and then immediately answers his own question, “In vulgar prejudice only.” He continues, “By those of inferior education, whose peculiar habits and pursuits have generated strong prejudices, this excuse may be pleaded; but by the intelligent and well-informed it will be viewed through a more correct medium.”
It might have the appearance of presumptuous temerity to oppose an opinion to this sweeping dogma of the learned Doctor; for, agreeably to his definition, I must confess that I am one of those of inferior education and vulgar prejudices whom he so designates. It may however be permitted me candidly to state, that I have viewed his proposition in every possible light, and have had some few opportunities of observing the effects of such a system, but somewhat modified, in several parts of the world; and that, after reflection as close and intense as my mind is capable of giving to any subject, I have decidedly formed an opinion, that the result of such an arrangement would be the very reverse of what he pronounces. It would, I firmly believe, be impossible for ingenuity to invent any thing that could contribute more effectually to vitiate the public opinion, and entirely extinguish the moral principle, than the open toleration or licensing of public brothels.
The Doctor surely must have forgotten that indulgence in this sin, more than any other, prepares the mind for the admission of every vice, and is generally the forerunner of the most diabolical and desperate depravity in vulgar life; and in the higher walks even leads to dissoluteness, profligacy, and total disregard of moral and religious obligations: or would he venture with confidence “to prescribe rules ‘Thus far shall you go, and no further?’” Under the superintendence even of so able a magistrate as himself, would it be possible to apply this rule? But of this I am confident, that no plain honest man who wishes to promote the cause of morality, and the general welfare of his country, will ever desire to see this experiment tried in England.
In support of the propriety of this salutary measure, the Doctor adduces examples drawn from Holland, Italy, and India. In the first of those countries my own observation has been rather limited, though quite sufficient to convince me, that under no circumstances or modifications whatever could the Doctor’s expectations of the system in its consequences be realized. That the morals of the people of that country were formerly as pure, or “the purest of any in Europe,” as he states, I am nothing loth to admit; but that their corruption and degeneracy have been in a great measure occasioned by this very sanction, or connivance, cannot, I think, be disputed.
In Italy, it is true, the system has had a wider range, and its effects have been fully developed. The Doctor’s intercourse with that country must have been limited indeed, else he would have known, that long established habits of libertinism had indisposed and incapacitated the majority of them for all useful intellectual pursuits; and that their minds generally were too enervated to give birth to, much less sustain, any of those noble virtues which only and irresistibly command admiration.