Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/38

28 of accepting females for a life of vice, and minutely and carefully arranging their lives, that so far from seeing anything injurious in such a plan, they defend it with energy, and refuse to see the injustice, tyranny, and demoralization which result from it.

This demoralizing tendency of vice, supported by law, is fully borne out by British experience. Wherever immoral legislation is allowed to proceed, unchecked by a death struggle, with an enlightened and vigorous public opinion, resolved to overthrow it, it immediately begins to exhibit the same signs of awful demoralization, cynicism, and cruelty that we observe in Brussels. This fact is painfully established by the contents of a Parliamentary paper, published last August, which will be read by every just and enlightened man and woman with equal indignation and shame.

The British Pro-Consul at Brussels (Mr. Jeffes) states: "The police have been much to blame; the police have been on far too intimate terms with the keepers of these houses." (303.) "The policemen's visits are not useful in protecting the women, as they are always in accord with the keepers."

A Brussels police agent said to an English philanthropist, who urged him to rescue some unfortunate girls: "We can not injure establishments legally