Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/75

Rh that a charge of this kind should be brought by a girl sufficiently developed in body to become pregnant, and that a man should not be allowed to plead in his own defence, that the act was done with her consent." "Again, a child of eleven had been a prostitute under training of her mother. Was a man to be placed in peril by the evidence of such persons, and prohibited from pleading consent?" "He had had before him a number of cases, in which the children concerned in them were of an exceedingly tender age. In one case a child of six was concerned, and the counsel raised the defence that the child did not resist. He overruled that defence."—(But)—"He was convinced that the limit of age in the bill was fixed too high, and that the age of ten would be quite as high as it ought to be." "His argument was, that if children of eleven or twelve years of age were capable of prostitution, they were capable of understanding the nature of the Act, and it was unreasonable that a man should not be allowed to plead the girl's consent."

Mr. Warton "felt it his duty to support the amendment." He was in favor of even a lower age than that named in the amendment of the Member for East Worcestershire." "He had only obtained one acquittal." "It was scarcely possible to get an acquittal when a little girl was in the witness box. One reason was that there were Societies maintained by bringing charges of this description. He believed