Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/47

Rh The increase of this class of vilest criminals—men who live upon women—is inevitable where promiscuous intercourse is regulated, not checked. If rich men buy poor women, leaving them without protection, women will buy poor men to afford them a ruffianly support in the social chaos where they live. We have noted the appearance of this foreign class in London. It has created tumults in Paris, and the unsafe condition of the streets, owing to the increase of ruffians, demands an indefinite increase of the police force.

We dare not dwell upon the atrocious, almost incredible scandals, which leak out in France, notwithstanding the utmost efforts of the police to hush them up. Such crimes as the Bordeaux infamy, the Duphot den of vice, the hideous Fenayron plot, have hitherto been unknown in England. The peculiarity of these atrocities is the astounding sexual corruption which they reveal—a putrefaction of morals, to produce which the element of time is necessary. This complete deprivation of social conscience can only be produced in England through the long-continued and extending influence of immoral law.

When a law is made for vice, such law does not confine its influence to the females engaged in the trade; for the law once established, shows henceforth to every person in the nation, old or young, male or female, what attitude is to be taken with regard to the particular subject of the law.