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These few particulars respecting the general character of licentious women are equally valuable to the legislator and the philanthropist; reform can only be effected by operating on the moral feelings, and we have therefore laboured to render those traits prominent which are at once the most strongly marked and the most influential.

But we should greatly err if we supposed that prostitution is limited to the registered frail ones of Paris, or to those known to the police in London; it assumes the more dangerous form of a "pestilence that walketh in darkness;" it is shrouded in such secrecy that there are many who do not even suspect its existence. The horrors of the state we have already described, great as they are, sink into insignificance when compared with the evils that result from clandestine prostitution. The young and the immature are its chief victims-those for whom monstrous licentiousness offers its highest price, those in the procuring of which there is the greatest risk and the greatest gain. The arts by which these atrocious criminals endeavour to baffle the vigilance of the police in Paris are vividly described by Duchatelet, and he seems almost to despair of any regulations being devised that would secure their extinction. It has been proved, that a system of domiciliary visits and extensive espionage only generated a new system of artifices, while it harassed and vexed the innocent, whose characters were at the mercy of every malicious neighbour. But one important observation has resulted from the experience of Parisian commissaries; they have had reason to believe that clandestine crime rapidly increases when severe measures are taken to repress ordinary prostitution; and they infer, that a judicious tolerance of those already depraved is necessary to the security of the virtuous. We are aware that this delicate topic has excited the attention of some of our most enlightened philanthropists, and various plans for establishing a rigid scrutiny have been laid before the authorities of the Home Office. The great difficulty is to provide a tribunal proper for deciding the perplexing questions to which repressive measures would give rise. There would be an absolute necessity for two of the greatest evils in criminal jurisprudence, unregulated discretion in the judges, and perfect secrecy in their proceedings. Without both, any attempt at regulation will only aggravate the evil; the tribe of procuresses and go-betweens must ever baffle fixed laws of repression; their forms of guilt are perpetually changing, and, unless the restrictive measures vary just as rapidly, all statutes on the subject will be a mere waste of ink and paper. It is unnecessary to dwell on the evils that would attend publicity in such proceedings; there are few parents or guardians who do not

know the danger to which youth is exposed by the gratification of prurient curiosity; there is no statistician ignorant of the effect of the imitative principle in extending crime. We know that one of the chief reasons why English statesmen have shunned legislative interference in this perplexing matter is their dread of the consequences that may result from publicity. It is sufficient for us to point out the nature of the difficulty; the remedy could only be found by a diligent investigation of the evil, and commissions are yet too unpopular for us to hope that the inquiry will be taken up by government unless there be a decided expression of public feeling on the subject. But, as our investigations have established that some elements on which a reforming process might be brought to work exist in the most degraded of these classes, and that their condition is susceptible of amelioration, we trust that enough has been said to call the attention of the humane and the intelligent to the importance of the subject.

We have said that abandoned women form a very fluctuating part of the population, but it is exceedingly difficult to discover the fate of those who suddenly disappear from the profligate herd. Yet the inquiry is one that must not be avoided, for if it appears that any considerable portion return into the general mass of the population, if we daily run the risk of entrusting to them our dearest interests, there arises a strong argument for subjecting prostitution to some surveillance, and counteracting, as far as possible, its penicious influences.

Of 5081 individuals erased from the registries in Paris during ten years, it was possible to trace the fortunes of 1680, or about one-third, to a certain extent.

972 obtained employments of different kinds; among these we found that 392 became mantua-makers or sempstresses; 17 went on the stage, and 13 became midwives: 242 obtained or set up shops, generally in some small retail trade:

461 became servants in different houses; 28 of these were employed as nursery-maids; 14 became housekeepers to old

and infirm bachelors, and five were engaged as assistants in boarding-schools.

We cannot follow the remaining 3401, but we can form some conjecture by examining the reasons assigned for their erasure from the register of the police.

28 died;

239 were sent home by charitable persons;

1206 took out regular passports for different places, where they proposed to establish themselves permanently;

319 were placed in penitentiaries;

254 were taken back by their parents;
185 were claimed by the criminal law;
177 were incapacitated by various maladies;
138 were claimed by the gendarmerie;

121 were married;

114 proved that they had means of subsistence;

101 were taken as mistresses;

91 were sent to the depôt of St. Denis;

28 were taken back by husbands they had abandoned.

Out of the 121 marriages, we find that in 56 cases the profession of the husband was not ascertained: 27 belonged to the lower classes of tradesmen; 17 were labourers; 11 small shopkeepers; 5 owners of public houses; and 5 belonged to an elevated rank of society!

Also, out of these 121, there were 88 who gave proof that the wedding was on the point of taking place; 28 presented the certificate of their marriage, and in 5 cases the husbands came to claim the erasure of their new spouses. Duchatelet insinuates that these five who showed such absence of shame belonged to the higher classes of society! He adds

"I know, from the mouths of physicians and inspectors, that they have frequently recognized in select society, and even in the highest circles, girls of the town who in former years had been subject to their surveillance."

Need we give a stronger proof of the necessity of discretion and secrecy in all matters connected with the judicial regulations that may be established to control or correct this evil?

Of those who disappeared from the streets without formally demanding their erasure, about one-half were afterwards detected in the practice of their former guilt.

5443 were unheard of for three months;

2126 were again detected by the police, and of these 1415 were discovered in the first year.

These tables sufficiently prove that a much larger mass of the population is affected by the practice of prostitution than is usually imagined, while at the same time they afford grounds for hope that measures of amelioration would produce beneficial results.

Two means of amelioration have been tried in England, a union of emigration and transportation, and a system of penitentiaries. The former is now generally confessed to be injurious; the state of morals in Sydney has been seriously deteriorated by the precious cargoes sent thither by mistaken benevolence. If the population of New South Wales had been like that of the American back-woods, spread over a wide surface, and engaged solely in agricultural pursuits, it is probable that the results

would have been very different; but in a penal colony the population is necessarily concentrated, and all the pernicious influences of contaminating example necessarily flourish. Archbishop Whately justly remarks:

"The convict is shielded as much as possible from the chance of reformation, by unrestricted intercourse with multitudes who are setting him, in every possible way, the worst possible examples: who do know his delinquency, but whose sympathy he must earn,--nay, whose ridicule he must escape-by a display of expert roguery and of hardened profligacy; and again, the terror of disgrace is as much as possible done away, by the offender's removal from the presence of any reputable persons for whom he may feel respect, and placed in a society in which there are abundantly enough to keep him in countenance; in which not only vice, but convicted criminality is the rule, and innocence the excep

tion.

In fact, this system has ended not in the reformation of the depraved, but in the ruin of the virtuous. But we are not thence to infer that emigration may not be made an efficient instrument of amelioration, though it must not be to a penal colony, or one in which a town population is formed. It is indeed a matter worthy of consideration, whether the establishment of a judicious system of voluntary emigration to some part of the Australian territories not yet colonized would not relieve our streets and our prisons from many who are forced to crime by mere destitution.

On the subject of Magdalen Asylums and Penitentiaries we shall be brief, because their merits have no need of being enforced by eloquence or argument. Their utility is incontestible, but there is a further inquiry-Have they effected all the good of which they are capable? Duchatelet answers in the negative, and in his account of the asylum of Bon Pasteur, which is superintended by charitable nuns, he intimates some causes of failure which may be read with profit in this country.

"There is too great a difference between the life of the prostitute and of the nun who has passed through a long noviciate; the latter has her thoughts constantly fixed on heavenly things; the former is often ignorant that a God exists, or that she has duties to fulfil. The prayers, meditations, and austerities which are the necessary results of the nun's belief, appear to the Magdalen wearying forms and an unmeaning ritual. It is only by slow degrees that the persons admitted into an asylum can be brought to appreciate religious instruction and devotional forms; virtue must be rendered agreeable, self-respect must be inculcated, and care must be taken not to daunt or terrify those who are admitted. The earthly advantages of virtue should be placed before them in the first instance, rather than the rewards of a future world. They should be taught the nature of their duties to God and society, their failure in the performance, the necessity and the manner of expia

tion; why they are secluded from the social system, how they may return within its pale. When once they have tried their strength and formed a hope that their restoration is not impossible, they will of their own accord direct their attention to the religious exercises, to which at present they accord only compulsory submission, and we shall not so often see the gates of refuge closed upon those who, weary of discipline, turn hopelessly back to their former disgraceful practices.

The cause why so many plans of moral reformation have signally failed is, that the contrivers never thought of the nature of the materials on which they had to work; they proceeded as if they had "tabula rasa" ready to receive any impression-a fallow-ground prepared for seed. Religious instruction was the first, and in many cases the only means on which they depended for success. We have shown that the character which the practice of prostitution forms is precisely that on which simple instruction operates least effectually; the very first lesson, the invitation to repentance, increases their sense of degradation and wounds their feelings of self-love; the confinement of an asylum is wearisome to wretches who are the most restless of human beings, and the authority claimed by a teacher provokes discontent. Employment is the first great requisite; it generates the sense of self-exertion, and it changes the former current of thought. But this employment should be varied in its nature,-millinery and fine work should be all but excluded; some field labour, washing, making and mending coarse garments, and those branches of industry which do not require association, and which do not interfere with any regular trade. We must take into account the state of the Magdalenes when they come into the asylum, and their probable destination when they leave it. In most cases their chief resource will be the lower grades of menial service, in which, to use a common phrase, they will be required rather to make themselves “ generally useful" than to show remarkable skill in any particular branch. There should be a provision for daily instruction in religion, but each lesson should be brief if it is designed to be impressive. Above all things, it ought to be impressed on those charitable persons who visit these asylums, to beware of encouraging flaming pretensions of penitence and religion. A clergyman, who was for many years a chaplain to one of these institutions, and whose piety is as remarkable as his prudence, assured us, that ladies who suffered themselves to be duped into the belief that they had made converts, often raised the greatest obstacles to real reformation. They gave little comforts to hypocrites who derided them behind their backs, and they subverted the first rules of moral discipline by giving to words the rewards that should only be merited by actions. Before we quit the subject,

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