Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/50

40 and most abundant evidence, that vice in both sexes increases far more rapidly, and assumes an intensity of corruption unknown to us, whenever the State accepts, registers, and guards prostitutes, instead of repressing promiscuous intercourse. In such a State, corruption eats into the life of all classes of the community. Licentiousness rapidly increases, and whenever that increases, unnatural and hideous forms of vice increase also. The Authorities, alarmed by the rising flood of corruption, make more and more stringent regulations for women. A band of spies, under various disguises, seek to entrap women. Assignation houses for married women, unknown to their husbands, are established (through M. Lenaars) in Brussels, in order that the police may supervise them. Minor girls are registered in direct violation of the common law of the land. A law to this effect has lately been passed in Brussels, through the instrumentality of M. Bols. These are logical results of the destructive idea that promiscuous intercourse can be rendered healthy by the inspection of every female. Meanwhile, corruption increases to such an appalling extent, that belief in the possibility of purity in men no longer exists in the minds of men or women.

A merchant of Bordeaux thus writes respecting his country: "Sexual immorality is constantly increasing, not only amongst our youth, but even amongst our boys. I vainly seek a remedy for this flood of