Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/69

 lowest of "deadly sins," may be statesmanship; to devise means and employ agencies to warn the unsuspecting or to reclaim the erring, may be philanthropy; but to trim immorality with fashion, to furnish it with facility, to countenance it with an apology, to provide it with a passport, or to charter it with a custom, is to set a premium on vice and to condemn the state or the society as "organised selfishness." A state or a society is not bound to procure for the carnal cravings of the sensual any more than to provide for the gambling tendencies or the thieving propensities of the avaricious. On the other hand, nations or communities are no less amenable than individuals to the ethical law that not to rebuke or protest against open vice is to half sanction it. The government that undertakes to protect base gratification from natural sting or merited stigma, incurs the heavy responsibility of furthering vice by making impurity venial. As Mrs. Josephine Butler has pointed out, state regulation of vice is