Part 6
I go on to add, that our immorality is _cruel_. If it be a folly to preserve certain men from the natural contagion consequent on their vices, it is a crime to multiply opportunities for vice, so as to decoy the individuals who, after disgracing themselves on the faith of what society holds out to them as safe, bequeath to us a heritage of curses when they are on the brink of the grave prematurely dug by their own profligacy. It is a crime of treason against the nation to send carcases, whether dead or living, back to families needing citizens and regulators of social education. Let us, then, get rid of all the frightful tolerations which set prostitution free from the rebuking and regenerating influences of a personal initiative. At all events, as the dens of infamy would not exist if there were not proprietresses to keep them, and men to frequent them, measures of repression brought to bear on girls only must be ineffective, since they do not reach the source of the evil. The same action should be brought to bear by the police on these houses as on gambling houses. This practicable and greatly-needed reform would inevitably be followed by the making every excitement to debauchery in the public street illegal, and by the right of complaint for every man accosted by a woman to whom he is not known, as for every woman addressed by a man with whom she was not previously acquainted. What a shame it is that, owing to debauchery, a civilization should tolerate, at particular hours, in these human flesh-markets, the suspension of God’s laws, which is the cause of ruin for thousands of young men who would never have become acquainted with profligacy if it had not been offered to them daily with such persistency, and who are unable to take a step, in our towns, without meeting with it.[52]
We have been enabled to see what a mistake it is to pretend that our Government toleration is _necessary for the protection of modest women_. If that were the case, we may be sure they would reject this annihilation of their sisters for their benefit; but it is proved, on the contrary, that _the insecurity of every woman_ results from the prerogatives granted to vice in France. Are we not aware, that nations which have not our monstrous measures of preservation, permit the girl to go out, to travel, and live by herself, for the purpose of either the secondary or the higher course of instruction; whilst in Paris more than 100,000 regulars and soldiers of the national guard, and a numerous body of police, fail to inspire the young woman of the middle class with sufficient confidence to allow her to venture a single step without a protector, or the lower-class young woman with a security sufficient to keep her from being made a merchantable article? Without even leaving our territory, any one may be convinced, by comparison, that the unprotected woman is so much the more respected in proportion as profligacy has less of license. Charts of France have been made, coloured more or less black according to the degree of instruction in each of our “departments.” It would be easy to make such an one for morality. It would demonstrate that the departments in which _the machinery for morals_ is the most active, the most inquisitorial towards the registered girl, are those in which a young girl who should have committed the offence of walking out “unprotected” is no longer marriageable.
Debauchery, driven from the street, would also be driven from cafés, hotels, &c., otherwise than by laughter-moving and arbitrary regulations against the “unprotected” woman. In this matter, then, we must further substitute, for police rule, a general law to reach the real doers of the evil, in the persons of those lodging-house keepers, tavern-keepers, coffee-house proprietors, &c., who, by the greediest complicity, make vice a matter of trade. But, alas! the law promulgated in 1778 alone remained to us for dealing a blow at this abuse, and, after applying it during the former half of the century, we declare it to be inapplicable in the latter, without finding a substitute for it. Shall we profess ourselves too much depraved to go back in this matter even to the measures adopted by a reforming Government at the period of the greatest decay of morals in our former monarchy?
The offence of treating for girls under age also demands a more severe law. The uncertainty of the penalty, the feeble attempts to put down the evil, as they appear when viewed with reference to the certainty of immediate advantages to be gained by it, do not stop the agents of procuration. The impunity assured to the person for whom the sale is effected also gives to this kind of offences a deplorable frequency and daring, in a country that punishes for a triple complicity, and by civic degradation, the printer, author, and editor of writings whose offence has sometimes been disseminating useful truths.
Profligacy driven from the public thoroughfares in this way, and from establishments frequented by men without a home, the honour of the girl under age being efficiently cared for, inexperienced youth will no longer fall into the inextricable pitfalls of prostitution; no one but the depraved man will, with the utmost caution, go into these sties of infamy, to gratify a vicious propensity which would be left to its natural consequences.
A community which sanctions the family principle should, further, spare us the scandal of actions for debt and theft brought by the prostituter against the prostituted. When our courts of law intervene to annul the engagements which those above or those under age have contracted with courtesans, it follows that these corrupters or these corrupted ones have procured for themselves, by false pretences, on credit or for a specific period, a gratification which the judge, as they have reason for knowing, will take upon himself to make a gratuitous one, and that their disgrace, which ought to close the ear of justice to their suits, finds such privileges as to permit them to do a wrong to the tradesmen who supply them with goods. Sound views will recognise the validity of these debts, or, in annulling them, punish the complainant for the fact of having prostituted himself; it is, above all, for cases such as these that article 60 of our Criminal Code should be declared applicable, thereby punishing _every individual who incites to profligacy by presents_. Very much to the contrary, the application of the law becomes deplorable in this matter; Lovelaces aged from 15 to 20, precocious Don Juans, become villains with impunity by the assistance of the law’s protection—spend some hundreds of thousands of francs in orgies, with the certainty of committing robbery; they promise, give their signatures, subscribe documents, and the court declares them white as snow, provided they do not pay anything; and this is the education by which we prepare young people for their life as citizens! What! is it to be supposed that these young men, who to-morrow will be electors, citizens, public officials, judges, magistrates perhaps, are not capable, at the age of 19 and 20 years, of a greater moral responsibility than the infant in long-clothes? Cancel their debts, if you like; but at least brand them for their cynical attacks on the fundamental laws of public propriety.
We must get rid of our confusion of principles with respect to those young people who, separated from their family by their profession, are entrusted to society. In the first place, in what has reference to the soldier, patriotism and a feeling of true honour, would not give him up to be corrupted by long years of inaction in garrison, and would not permit any man to lead the life of a pig under cover of the flag of France. Now that we are threatened with the corporal-instructor, we ought, I think, to be permitted to know that his certificate of good conduct has not compelled him to disavow his illegitimate children, nor to denounce and imprison the victim guilty of having aimed a blow against his security in debauchery.
As for that numerous body of civilian youths fighting on the battle-field of life in schools, in public offices, workshops, commerce and so forth, shall we leave them without a guide, to succumb to the degradation of the companions of Ulysses? No; they must henceforward do themselves honour by putting a curb on their passions and mastering their excesses. It is the duty of us all to shew them, from the commencement of their course, marked distinctions between the road to honour and that to infamy by imposing obligatory limits to stop them in bad courses. It is the right of moral families to know that the member they wish to unite to them by marriage is a man, and not a living carcase, sullied with all sorts of profligacy.
Let us then establish courts of honour to separate goodness from evil—great associations which will confer distinction on themselves by the morality they exact from their candidates and those whom they employ, putting us thus upon the road of reformation.
Each of us has, in this matter, his work to accomplish, and we shall succeed if we know how to be united in a common feeling. The law for outrage on public morals would authorize us in a rebellion against our administrative toleration of vice; all men of courage, claiming the emancipation of destitution sold to profligacy, must likewise denounce the shamelessness of those men who would, with one hand, punish the freedom of the press while protecting the obscenity of the streets with the other; who ill-use free-thinkers while they grant charters to free livers. In what has reference to legislative repression Art. 334 of our Criminal Law, joined to Art. 60, of which I have spoken, would be sufficient for putting down the evil, if applied to direct profligacy, especially in actions for debt and theft which debauchees bring against their accomplices.
It is, nevertheless, to Art. 340 of our Civil Code that the guilty complaisance of our interpretation of the law for profligate morals must be attributed. The license into which the irresponsibility there laid down hurries a great number of law students, greatly contributes to warp their judgment in these suits, and to take from vice its last restraint. Alas! shall we have the energy necessary for a real reform? We have astonishingly perfected the physical sciences, and developed material civilization; but we have so little advanced in the science of the law and the duty which govern our connexions in society, our ambition is so little excited for the development of human dignity, that we put our frightful complaisance for debauchery under the patronage of St. Augustine and St. Louis. Should we be willing to retrograde to such an extent in the arts and mechanical processes—we who, in morals, dare to take our ideal in pagan and barbarian society? When our Senate, some years ago, discussed this grave question, it did not put the inquiry to itself, whether seduction and irresponsible debauchery are the great highways of public infamy; still less did it examine if despotic centralization, which arbitrarily deprives the young girl of professional instruction, and the woman of an honourable income, does not at all contribute to her ruin. This Senate, _the guardian of morals_, refrained from looking round within its own precincts, to see if it were not, in any way, harbouring members whose example might weaken the authority of its precepts; it did not seem to suspect that a courtesan is the effect of a debauchee who pays for her, and it did not at all wish to know if its sons were contributing to the evil: laying it wholly upon the _luxuriousness of women_, it contented itself with some pleasantries, and, far from opposing strong means of resistance to profligacy, declared that Art. 484 of our Criminal Code sufficed for putting down vice.[53] Almost immediately after this discussion, the Asiatic pest, raging around us, threatened our physical existence. Oh! then we became the champions of progress; we knew how to attack the evil in its very source; our civilizing efforts were proposing to purify the Ganges itself—the home of the epidemic: ordering inquiries, putting sixteen questions to the meeting of the international conference at Constantinople, we made an appeal to the enlightened intelligence of the whole world. Why then does our energy fail in view of the plague of public profligacy, more fatal to the moral life of a nation than is the cholera-epidemic to its material life? Since we know the causes of the evil, we deserve to be execrated if we do not look for wholesome means of reaction—if authorities established to put it down continue to protect it. The measures I am proposing, if they are examined by the prismatic glass of history, reason, national and personal rights, are the conditions of liberty and public decency. They will confine the evil to the dregs of society.
When we are governed by a moral Code, the Family institution grounded on morality and labour, will be able, without aid, to tread down the hydra of debauchery, wallowing in the mire of idleness and licentiousness. But, if justice and honour do not come out victorious from the present struggle, woe, a thousand times woe, to the vanquished!
T. BRAKELL, PRINTER, LIVERPOOL.
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Footnote 1:
Published by Ernest Thorin, 7, Rue de Médicis, Paris, 1869.
Footnote 2:
One of our salaried seducers learned that destitution was reducing one of his illegitimate daughters to have herself registered at the office of the department of morals. A friend of his urged him to claim her, so as to save her from this disgrace:—“If,” said he, “I were obliged to help all my daughters, my income would not be sufficient to do it.”
Footnote 3:
Alfred de Musset—“Confessions d’un enfant du siècle.”
Footnote 4:
To turn, for a moment, from these horrors, let us say they horrify the moral working-men who have undertaken the responsibilities of the family without selfish ideas conceived previously. These men generally give proof of a sentiment of honour, too often extinguished in the upper classes; but what is their state of mind when they are not able to guard their wives and daughters against a disgrace which is the daily bread of an insufficient labour-market? Their faces are then stern, their eyes vindictive; their heads droop, but they cherish in their hearts, against the peace of society, a profound hatred and projects of vengeance which are only too inveterate. Ah! let us dread the storms we are collecting over our heads, in a gloomy future; if we have not the energy to put down profligacy from a love of virtue, let us, at least, do it from considerations of its cost.
Footnote 5:
Clandestine prostitution invariably increases wherever the system of registration and police regulation exist.
Footnote 6:
E. A. Duchesne—“De la prostitution dans la ville d’Alger, depuis la conquête, 1853.”
Footnote 7:
Letter from the Bishop of Algiers to the Governor-General of Algeria, May 1868.
Footnote 8:
I shall better still define the respective condition of the Mussulman and French morals and laws by recalling to recollection that Emir who went about Paris displaying, in a triumphal manner, two girls under age purchased under the title of wives. If we take the oneness and the sacred nature of our indissoluble marriage-institution as the measure of this outrage on the dignity of humanity, we see in it a defiance to our civilisation. It is, nevertheless, a fact that Abdel Kader could have been supplied with human flesh on the Parisian market on much easier terms; if he repudiates his Circassians, he must provide for them, while he would have been free, on his departure, to turn Parisians out into the street. In the investigation of our scandalous morals, we shall meet, among our officials, with types of degradation which would make the Grand Chief Mussulman blush. If, therefore, from our lawful monogamy to the Arab polygamy, the distance from heaven to earth be measured, there is between our irresponsible profligacy and that polygamy all the interval from earth to hell. Before our time the children born in the harem belonged to the father; in our time, those born out of it belong to the mother. The economical results of this state of things, in a country where woman has no means of support, can be calculated.
Footnote 9:
Some years since, a wealthy foreigner offered a brothel-proprietress 10,000 francs (£400) for a young girl. She bought her from a greedy mother, who was to receive half the price of the sale, but the procuress disappeared after delivery of the girl, and receiving payment for her. The mother, disappointed of the part she agreed for, went to a lawyer with her case, but he declined to have anything to do with this unsavoury affair.
Footnote 10:
At the July Revolution, the gates of St. Lazare were opened for them, but they declined to go out from it.
Footnote 11:
A Parisian tenant was complaining that the house which he thought was well-tenanted should lodge women of doubtful reputation and be the theatre for riotous and scandalous orgies. The porter replied: “These women, who pay for their occupancy as you do, are more generous than yourself; if you are not satisfied with the neighbourhood you can look for a better—in any event, _their money is worth as much as yours_.”
Footnote 12:
Brière de Boismont has made out a list of seventeen suicides, in ten years among the girls registered in Paris.
Footnote 13:
Lamartine—History of the Girondins.
Footnote 14:
According to Lairtullier, she stabbed him herself with a dagger.
Footnote 15:
“He who takes a prostitute for his wife,” says Innocent III., “performs an act of piety, for he rescues her from the road to ruin, and obtains forgiveness of his sins.”
Footnote 16:
The livre was worth about 10½d.
Footnote 17:
A basis of comparison may be formed by remembering that Joinville, one of the richest noblemen of that age, who went to the crusade with troops equipped at his own charges, had an income of 1,500 livres.
Footnote 18:
Tacitus: Manners of the Germans—XII.
Footnote 19:
A decree of February 13th, 1424, is made the protector of public girls against the dissolute men who beat them.
Footnote 20:
P. Dufour: History of Prostitution—Vol. IV.
Footnote 21:
Art. 1st—Women and girl prostitutes are forbidden to do fancy work (to crochet) on the quays, in the squares, public walks, boulevards, &c.
Footnote 22:
One of the noblest and most constant subjects of interest to the Emperor at St. Helena was the discovery of effectual means for guarding against profligacy in towns.
Footnote 23:
Law of November 19th, 1866.
Footnote 24:
For the tendency of similar legislation in England, see _Saturday Review_, January 8th, 1870:—“The law accepts the fact of a contagious disease which happens to exist in a human subject only as the law accepts the fact of a bad drain or an unhealthy factory, and deals with it accordingly. In neither case is either the woman or the nuisance _treated as a moral agent, but as a physical fact_.”—[EDITOR.]
Footnote 25:
Correctional Court of Niort, _re_ Plassiart—Sitting of Dec. 7, 1861.
Footnote 26:
No one is permitted to come into court who must avow his own shame.
Footnote 27:
Assize Court of the Seine—Sitting of May 12, 1868.
Footnote 28:
Law of October 25, 1864.
Footnote 29:
The authoress, when she wrote these pages, had not heard the fact that the _Contagious Diseases Acts_ had become law in England.—[EDITOR.]
Footnote 30:
In the United States the Constitution thus establishes the principle of responsibility:—“The president, vice-president, and all civil functionaries, shall be liable to be turned out of their places if, after being accused, they are convicted of treason, the waste of public money, or other offences, and _of libertinism_.” In the same way, every elector, before voting, must give proof of his morality. The Prussian laws sentence the pander who allures women, even those above age, by artifice, to ten years’ hard labour, and have him flogged when he is sent to, and when discharged from, prison. They deprive fathers, mothers, masters, patrons, tutors, &c., of their rights, if they abuse, merely by licentious words, those placed in their care. Russia whips debauchees with the knout. Spain has partly kept up her old laws, which were severe only on the purveyors of profligacy and the frequenters of places of infamy, by declaring that “_The shame proceeds from him who pays for debauchery, and not from her who sells it and receives its price._” Public prostitutes there, who engage maid-servants under 40, are sentenced to one year’s transportation, and a fine of 2000 marvedi, &c.
Footnote 31:
In one of our towns of 100,000 inhabitants, the brothels receive about 1,200,000 francs yearly.
Footnote 32:
Marcus Aurelius, who understood all the importance of moral perfection, thanks the gods for having had a youth of chastity. How few sovereigns can say with him: “Men want a head as flocks do a leader. This head is not above the laws, his life separated from the body of society would be a factious one.... A sovereign cannot do his duty if he does not find advisers to point it out to him,” &c.
Footnote 33:
Luxuriousness, more ruthless than war, overmastered us, and avenges the world (we have) conquered.
Footnote 34:
A young debauchee used to get women into a house for base purposes. After debauching his victims he deserted them in the darkness of night in the middle of winter, among the intricacies of a house unknown to them. When, half dead from cold, they dragged themselves in the morning to the doorstep to complain of this barbarity, the young man, questioned by the porter, feigned surprise. At other times, he made sport, impudently, of recriminations he knew to be unable to reach him, and commonly boasted of the privileges of irresponsibility which convert marriage into a profession of trickery. This guardian of our social morality was decorated, in 1848, for having, in the June days, fought _in defence of public tranquillity_.
Footnote 35:
The purport of this couplet may be thus freely rendered:—
“Denied of one fat vice to take their fill, Morsels of several serve them for a meal.”
Footnote 36:
The protection of the student is insufficient, even in the special schools which have pupil-boarders. They are, it is true, supposed to have guardians, but, in reality, left to themselves twice a week, and on some days, as extra holidays, when they come back, they proceed to get a certificate of good behaviour signed by a guardian, who, busied with his own affairs, cannot have known how they spend their time.
Footnote 37:
Assize Court of the Seine, sitting of February 4, 1866.
Footnote 38:
When we reflect that foreign youths learn such manners in France, we are no longer surprised that the profligate, and, too often, the governing portion of Europe, should consider the investigation to discover the father of disowned children inconvenient.
Footnote 39:
One of our well-known courtesans, in her memoirs, brings to mind one of her former supporters, who was then a public official in a provincial town, and who is sending her stolen expressions of regret, and looking upon his appointment as a post of insupportable banishment, far from the social circle in which he lived with her.
Footnote 40:
Bishops asserted the Church’s right of deposing adulterous princes, fornicators, &c., and of absolving their subjects from every oath of fidelity to them. (See M. Guizot, “History of Civilization in Europe.”)
Footnote 41: