ich it is not). If a burglar, who had broken
into my house and stolen my goods, were to fall and be hurt, I
would be glad to get him into a hospital and have him nursed and
cured; but I would not put a ladder up against my window at night
and leave the windows open in order that he might steal my goods
without danger of breaking his neck.

"You will see clearly, also, the cowardliness and unmanliness of
this law, inasmuch as it sacrifices women to men, the weak to the
strong; that it deprives the woman of all that she has in life, of
liberty, character, law, even of life itself (for it is a process
of slow murder to which she is subjected), for the supposed
benefit of men who are mean enough to avail themselves of this
provision of lust.

"Besides being grossly unjust, as between men and women, this law
is a piece of class legislation of an extreme kind. The position
and wealth of men of the upper classes place the women belonging
to them above any chance of being accused of prostitution. Ladies
who ride in carriages through the street at night are in no danger
of being molested. But what about working women? what about the
daughters, sisters and wives of working men, out, it may be, on
an errand of mercy at night? and what, most of all, of that girl
whose father, mother, friends are dead or far away, who is
struggling hard, in a hard world, to live uprightly and justly
by the work of her own hands,--is she in no danger of this law?
Lonely and friendless, and poor, is she in no danger of a false
accusation from malice or from error? especially since under this
law _homeless_ girls are particularly marked out as just subjects
for its operation; and if she is accused, what has she to rely on,
under God, except that of which this law deprives her, the appeal
to be tried 'by God and my country,' by which it is understood
that she claims the judicial means of defense to which the law of
the land entitles her?

"I will only add that this law has a fatally corrupting influence
over the male youth of every country where it is in force. It
warps the conscience, and confuses the sense of right and wrong.
When the State raises this immoral traffic into the position of a
lawful industry, superintended by Government officials, what are
the young and ignorant to think? They cannot beli