Page:Wrong and Right Methods of Dealing with Social Evil - Elizabeth Blackwell (1883).djvu/78

68 for the protection of the vicious in wrong-doing. The argument that a fornicator must be protected in his evil-doing against a young girl who offers to lead him astray, is the most cowardly instance of moral obliquity that can well be brought forward.

There are, alas! too many adult women ready to supply the demands of vice, making broad and easy the road for the unmanly fornicator. Such persons require no exceptional protection from the law. But our children we are bound to protect. Christian society is imperatively called on to demand that the young shall be guarded by law—the more defenceless the more carefully guarded—until age and experience give them the power of distinguishing between good and evil.

The future education of the young into respect for their own human bodies, and into mutual reverence, can only be effectually accomplished when the vicious adult is prevented by heavy punishment from corrupting minors—boys equally with girls.

The protection of minors is, therefore, the first and most important of the legitimate functions of law, and the foundation of every radical method of dealing with this tremendous evil.

The efficient protection of minors from the corrupting influence of vicious adults by just and severe law, and the energetic execution of such law, will destroy the chief root of licentiousness. It will prove the true