Page:A thousand years hence. Being personal experiences (IA thousandyearshen00gree).djvu/190

 tional cases. There had been, too often in the past, a senselessly absurd miscarriage of justice, where the judge or magistrate had to confess that the atrocity of the case before him could not be adequately, or even perhaps at all, reached by the existing law. Henceforth he himself was therefore constituted the exceptional law for such exceptional cases; and as all courts in such cases were open, and all sentences revisable, the discretion thus confided, while much more effectually protecting or avenging the innocent, was in no great danger of abuse towards the guilty.

We may turn, by way of illustration, to one glaring social wrong, which, in particular, pressed upon society at this time for such exceptional remedies. This was the terribly prevalent, and hitherto far too safely pursued system of deceiving, seducing, or kidnapping young women for immoral purposes—a wrong truly more awful to its victims than the foulest murder, but as to which, in its various ways of devilish ingenuity, our courts had too often to confess that they stood powerless in trying to apply the actual law. One chief aim also was "to protect young girls from artifices to induce them to lead a corrupt life." This whole question, in fact, was in the condition of a continual outrage upon society's sense of justice and humanity. When in addition to stricter legal enactment, discretionary power was given to the courts, in all cases of this kind, to estimate actual offence and wrong-doing, and to award accordingly, the evil was at once seized by the throat and virtually put an end to.