Part 5
At this trial, the judges, without respect for public decency, put upon the stool of repentence all the women whom the respectable citizen and upright functionary Reynaud had bought for five sous or five francs. Let these female domestics and day labourers, whose honour is worth a few francs, pass in review, and let girls belonging to the wages-earning class be fastened to the pillory! The court did not blush to compromise even a wife and mother who had had dealings with Reynaud: it violated the sanctity of the domestic circle in summoning this woman to give her evidence. The unhappy creature seeking, as in a barbarous age, an asylum at the foot of the altar, knelt down for a whole day in a church, in the hope of escaping the shame of this trial, at which she was questioned, in inquisitorial language, in presence of the public, about the most minute details of her illicit connection with the accused man. After in this way sacrificing the weak, the judges manifested particular leniency to the officials, the lovers of the daughters assassinated by Reynaud, as necessary to the proceedings as the women who figured at them; inviolability, the protectress of their profligacy, prevented justice from summoning them, and even uttering their names; their “_honorabilité_,” kept safe by the letter “h,” suffers them to continue preaching social morality in our departments, and leading the people back to healthy notions of law and duty!
To understand the immense mischief which a single profligate man can do, we must refer to our multitudes of Reynauds who have neither killed nor stolen, but who, submitting like himself to the yoke of unbridled passions, sow death wherever they go without being punished for it.[45]
In the face of an irresponsibility of such a nature, instead of lamenting lest morality should no longer exist, we should rather wonder that there is any to be found.
I am aware that with our dissolute officials we might place in contrast noble types of moral qualities in other public functionaries, who are honourable and devoted to the public welfare; but this contrast would be a fresh condemnation of the society which despises the family to the extent of not making any distinction between these and those whose morals I have sketched. Did not this confusion of principles already exist in the Roman Empire at the period in which Corneille depicts it in his “_Polyeucte_”?
To the profligacy of the student and the public official, let us add that of the soldier:—
We should look into history in vain for a method of defending our native country, more opposed to its true interests than is our peace-army. Conformably to a memorandum of the Council of State (December 21st, 1808) declaring that it is for the good order of the army and the interest of society _that military men should not be able to contract inconvenient marriages, susceptible of altering the consideration due to their character_, the generals and colonels on active service and liable to be called out, half-pay officers, and reserve-conscripts, must obtain a special authorisation to marry, under penalty of being left unprovided for, of being reduced in rank, and of the loss of all rights and titles. We know that the marriages _of convenience_ consist in the settling the minimum of the marriage portion; but, in spite of these conditions, the official permission being only given to the heads, marriage is very exceptional in the army, and still more so in the imperial guard. Hence follow prostitution in towns, seduction and concubinage in the rural districts, and female degradation and the sacrifice of infant life everywhere. The government had, in this matter, even lost the sense of economy to the extent of almost requiring, after a five years’ active service, three years in the reserves _without marrying_. If the “Corps législatif” has, by its energetic opposition, procured three years reserve _with power to marry_, we must not congratulate ourselves too much upon this victory, for the relative advantage the man finds in irregularity of life, and the prospect of being again called out for active service, will keep him in those injurious bonds which banish family duties in the interests of the rights of profligacy.
As to the military man on active service, he must, on that account, reject a poor girl who would gain an honourable livelihood by working; if a marriage contract with her is signed, the minister of war intervenes to punish the delinquent and the notary guilty of this (so-considered) discreditable transaction.[46] The same prohibition is enforced by the commanders of the army against making reparation for a wrong to a seduced woman who might not have any marriage portion whatever; consequently, according to the reports of the societies of St. Vincent de Paul and François Régis, the formal opposition of superiors to the legitimation of soldiers’ natural children.
It is impossible to estimate the lax morality which results from this. Independently of the scandals caused by particular leading military men, it has been noticed that illegitimate births increase, in towns, in direct proportion to the presence and increase of garrisons, which have also carried prostitution into out-townships till then preserved from this pest.
Of this, an opinion may be formed from the fact that our soldiers defile themselves to the extent of maintaining a third of the common prostitutes; that uniform which should only be met with on the field of honour, even serves to enable soldiers to obtain a reduction of one half the payment in brothels. It is incredible how far the license of knights who wear the colours of the famous women of our streets extends; their _military honour_ is the negation of the virtues which make the good citizen.
Idleness, provocations, contests with non-military power, drunken and degrading brawls, in which the name of _father of a family_ is thrown in the teeth of the moral soldier by way of insult,—such is the life of a great number of troopers who have never been in action. Base gratifications have so perverted their moral sense, that brothers carry off from sisters who have not enough to live upon, the fruit of their earnings; insensible even to the distress of indigent parents, they frequently spend their pay in a few days’ orgie. These are the veterans who, adopting the manners of courtesans, spend their time, as _they_ do, in tightening their waists, arranging their hair, and loading themselves with perfumes. An automaton-like precision and instincts of _slaughter_, will be powerful enough, nevertheless, to make them deserve the distinctions to which the terms _country_ and _honour_ are attached.
The license and brutality of the soldiery in reference to women, the distorted gallant attentions, the unhappy complicity of the commanders in breaches of morals, become incomprehensible if they are contrasted with the rigid discipline which sometimes punishes with death the least rebellion against a superior, and condemns to loss of rank, to long years of confinement, the theft of a pair of officer’s gloves. Just minds are expressing the opinion that France will only escape ruin by a more healthy recognition of social obligations, which may cause her, at length, to understand that the honour of the woman of the masses, the future of her children, the personal dignity of the man, should have more value in the eye of the military code than a pair of officer’s gloves, or than the demands of shop-keepers.
In the face of promises violated, of prospects blighted, the garrison nevertheless goes away, insulting occasionally with a cruel irony, the tears of mothers, and the lamentations of families. The commanders, faithful to the laws of French honour, have caused the tobacco and drink supplied by too confiding hands to be respected. This kind of integrity satisfied, the bugle sounds, the trumpets re-echo, the drum beats, the ensign is unfurled, France marches to glory, advancing in her onward path over the bodies of children and women sacrificed by our soldiers.
These profligate habits, hawked from town to town by our garrisons, appear especially lamentable in small localities. Uproarious orgies which, from morning to evening, sadden the passer by, issue from public-houses termed officers’ “cafés.”
There, men who wish for nothing in life beyond sensual gratifications, spend their entire day, glass or billiard cue in hand, cigar in mouth, and make themselves conspicuous by the brutality of their manners. One understands that, with these notions of morals, our courts-martial sometimes treat rape as a pastime, hardly within the jurisdiction of the police-court, if they do not give it triumphant acquittal, and that their verdicts often condemn to a few days’ imprisonment, public outrages on modesty. To give an idea of the spirit of this legislation, I shall make reference to the case of Léandri.[47] That officer was brought before a military tribunal, under the law for preventing rape. A large body of soldiers escorted him with a defiant and threatening attitude that had the air of setting justice and morality at nought. Léandri’s counsel went so far as to make his frequenting the “quartier Bréda” meritorious in him: “_He has mistresses_,” said he, “_is not that the common practice?_”
The imperial commissioner interfered, in his turn, to reproach the accused for having dressed himself in the character of a Joseph. Why was he ashamed to acknowledge that he was a jovial pleasure-seeker? He could not be blamed for that. The acquittal of this valiant defender of France permitted him to protect us by his good morals, until the theft of a cash-box caused him to be sentenced. His wrong was not having been rich enough to pay for his mistresses with his small coin, otherwise he would be still a brave fellow, resembling many others, for the army reckons thousands of men of honour of this description, whose particular talent is the theft of women and not of cash-boxes. Certain courts-martial have, through it, even come to look upon rape as an extenuating circumstance in a case of assassination. A Vincennes artillery-man was convicted, on the inferences of doctor Tardieu, of having violated a child of seven years with the most revolting atrocity, and then of assassinating her with seventeen stabs of his poinard. Out of seven judges of this monstrous occurrence, three voted for the acquittal of the culprit, who escaped through having a minority favourable to him.[48]
These rakes, returning again to their native district, after being liberated, spread corruption even to our smallest villages, where they constitute themselves instructors in vice for the young of both sexes. Let not these plain-spoken truths, however, cause it to be thought that I confound the real men of honour of our army with these numerous supporters of taverns and brothels. Besides, I am not so much attacking the persons as the institutions which are the causes of the evil, like our peace-army, hateful in all its bearings; the negation of the moral law, and, consequently, of civil order, which is order in the intellect and not in the street. In order to raise a revolt against this state of things, it should suffice to point out that it keeps no account of the soldier’s respectability of morals, and even degrades from official honour the courageous man who sets himself determinedly to practise natural morality in despite of social.[49] For the rest, if this evil should spread generally, it is the downfall of society; if it check itself, the reaction will beat back the leaders who endure or exact it.
This investigation has shown us that prostitution does not bring dishonour, among us, upon the man who is defiled by it, and does not shut against him the road to any public appointment. We may be convinced that, in France, these prerogatives have caused the principle of the family to fall into the contempt in which that of property is in the East.
Theft does not there disgrace public officials, because its immediate advantages often triumph over a dilatory repression, uncertain, and always ineffectual. If our criminals, our robbers, were sheltered from the public vengeance, we should, in the same way, have to be resigned to the evil of an unchecked brigandage.
Our social arrangements, therefore, by going against nature, in the physical, intellectual, and moral consequences she attaches to crime, offers to the vicious man the advantages of a robber who, sure of impunity, should see patrols watching over his safe-keeping, and racking their brains to perfect the instruments he wants for his midnight burglaries. Moreover, they have taken away every security from the victims of the wrong, in order to extend them to its promoters. Hence results the extent of the canker which is gnawing us; we have to endure even vanity of vices become fashionable, against which nothing can defend us, whilst we ought to be armed against the unpunished evil-doer. Prostitution, apart from marriage, has brought contagion to marriage itself. Take away from it the mercenary character of the contract, and none of these men will clog themselves with a permanent tie. Meanwhile, as they have one foot in respectable and the other in doubtful society, they have established the link of connection between the two hemispheres, and exact that their wives should adopt the courtesan’s manners, or make the courtesan adopt them by the imitation of theirs. But still the progress is not fully realised; for, if the so-called respectable man must obtain his civilian education in the haunts of profligacy, these haunts cannot be any longer closed to our modest girls, and we ought to think it as moral to admit into respectable society the daughters, sisters, wives and mothers, who go to the public thoroughfare to get lovers, as the sons, brothers, husbands and fathers who go there to get fresh mistresses. If we shudder at these logical consequences, they may, at least, teach us where we are in respect to them from the stand-point of law, natural morality and justice, for conjugal union is only possible where there exists, in those united, conformity of education and morals.
Society, like the family, finds itself afflicted by this profligacy, which, in relation to marriage, further destroys the proportionate balance of the births of each sex. It takes for granted a hundred, and even a thousand times, more male than female debauchees, and corresponds to an equal number of modest girls who are living in discomfort or poverty, since wherever a hundred men can run after one woman for the purpose of prostitution, it follows that a hundred women ought to run after one man for the purpose of marrying him.
When the evil has reached these proportions, the fall of the arts and literature follows the corruption of morals. This is the cause of those debased talents, those obscenities which bring discredit upon art, and which, instead of the severely chaste creations of the Poussins and the Lesueurs, present for our contemplation the orgies of artistes falling, when overcome by drunkenness, into the courtesan’s arms; the impurities displayed in our monuments, in our public squares, is the result of a like cause.
In literature, the corruption of particular authors inspiring their writings, keeps them floating by the motive power of their unchaste wishes; and we should not, I imagine, look for noble creations from these young authorlings who, not blushing to sell themselves to old mistresses, by whom they are paid, desert them as soon as they meet with the favours of another who pays them better. Their code of morals must be that of the contemporaries of Plautus, claiming that rich women should choose their lovers, but that poor ones must love the man rich enough to buy them. This absence of true and deep seated feelings, this mercenary species of love, gives birth to a mass of scribblers without principles—of would-be poets of the affections, who, being neither poets nor in love, prostitute their pen to every subject, as they do their person to every harlot.
What shall we expect, moreover, from the art of observation? Why should our numerous “Messieurs aux camélias” after what they call their term of youthful folly, and when they have become faithful husbands, tender fathers, upholders by conviction of the family institution, become indignant at seeing an abandoned woman attain to their own nobleness of sentiment? Why should not the stage have the right to exhibit for us these fellows, just liberated from college restraint, who get up _women’s parties_? Why should it spare those far-seeing fathers, who take as much pains to procure modest mistresses for their sons as to buy them pure-bred horses? Art and literature, let it not be forgotten, are the reflections of the state of society; let not sweet-smelling odours be looked for from an atmosphere loaded with infection.
Let us no longer behave as insensates, who, after breaking a mirror that shows them uglier than they are, credit themselves with as many more attractions as they see fewer. The theatre, which is the mirror of our manners, ought even to go so far as to produce, on the stage, the courtesan in person, and to have her applauded in those “tableaux vivants” of which she is the heroine.
V.
“In short, the truth must be spoken. Woe to those who speak it not, and woe to you if you are not worthy of hearing it.”
_Letter from Fènèlon to Louis XIV._
The investigation of this melancholy subject has placed before us the progress of the evil, through the destitution and dependence of the young women of the lower classes; and the impunity, and even the protection, of the agents and accomplices of profligacy. This too clear and a thousand times attested degradation of the woman by discomfort and poverty, this glut in the supply of prostitution on the market in seasons of dearth of employment, enables us to understand the error of certain anti-economical doctrines representing that the man, who is the bread-winner for _four_, is ever his wife’s and mother’s and child’s protector at his fireside.[50]
The sad eloquence of facts too often shews us the possessors of income, fortune and wealth corrupting those suffering from destitution and hunger. We must in a measure base the regeneration of France upon material independence, the source of woman’s dignity; and, consequently, we call for a widely extended system of professional instruction, of liberty of action which may, if possible, introduce into the laws of wages the equality which obtains in those of real estate.
With reference to the impunity and protection of the immoral man, they are condemned by sound reason bearing testimony that every society disloyal to the laws that maintain its vitality, must perish by continually-increasing degeneracy. The purpose of human existence is moral perfection, not happiness, much less those vulgar, coarse, and fatal pleasures which, by lowering man to the level of the brute, destroy the institution of marriage, together with the domestic virtues and the rights of the weak. Let us then reject the sophisms of erring and depraved intellects, which represent that paths must be opened to profligacy if we would have the sanctuary of the family institution respected. In the slough of the Roman empire, the rights and necessities of _passions not to be resisted_ were already being talked of, when Christianity replied by raising man and woman to the same moral perfection.
Let us further remind our self-satisfied people of the prosperity of the family principle among nations which put down prostitution, and of its decline among those who permitted it: perhaps they will, at length, understand the value of the argument from facts.
Be it, in the first place, remarked that the irresponsibility of the father of children born out of wedlock, which gives him every advantage in going after prostitutes, is the most fruitful cause of profligacy. I would, then, make other repressive measures subordinate to the effort to make the father responsible. After placing this corner-stone of social law in such a position as to act with rigour against prostitution, we shall scarcely need to inquire if that evil can be restrained.
Human dignity and civil equality are opposed to penal measures against the common prostitute as such. This is the point from which to start on the effort to discover a just measure for checking prostitution. Ancient France was ignorant alike of registration and the frightful “surveillance” it necessitates. We know that modern nations governed by the laws of true honour have maintained justice enough to be horrified at this utter destruction of the human soul for the benefit of debauchery. The nations that are seized with the desire of emulating our system for the regulation of morals have, on the contrary, fallen to an unspeakable degree of degradation.[51]
What deep seated corruption does the unrestricted haunting of places of ill-repute by beings endowed with that threefold bridle of the passions—reason, intelligence, and liberty—take for granted! Prostitution is an irreparable ill for young men who, by it, lose the pure source of the moral affections. We must therefore, at any cost, snatch them from this infamy, make them feel its horror, and, above all, not make use of the threefold complicity of government, legislation, and jurisprudence, to promise the safe-keeping of their health, their money, and their secret in their profligate courses.
I have, previously, made apparent the immorality which this organization indicates; for physical, intellectual, and moral penalties are, let us repeat, society’s only safeguard against vicious persons. It is everywhere attested, by experience, that the certainty, the hope merely, of escaping punishment, multiplies vicious habits; thus, when the Government does not watch over the debauchee with so paternal a solicitude, a first step in vice is frequently—on account of the misery, disgrace, maladies and mental incapacity it entails—a living lesson for the young, who imbibe the feeling of discretion by making a comparison between the gratification and its consequences. It is a stringent duty of morality and logic, then, to take away from human merchandise the official impress, in order that the buyer, acting at his own risk and peril, may become more circumspect; so that, trained to imbibe a horror of profligacy, individuals should not persist in feeding on the poison, and should catch some sense of self-respect by at least the feeling of responsibility, added to the interposition of other subjects of interest. Certain men would perhaps be ashamed to haunt places which, if left unprotected in their infamy, would no longer be looked upon as necessary institutions. Let us then deplore the infatuation of those communities which talk of the teaching of morality while they protect the debauchee; as if a part of the teaching of morality did not consist in causing the good and bad consequences of human action to be apparent; as if moralists could have authority in circumstances where vice is compulsorily invested with rights, while virtue is clogged by penalties.