The New York herald. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1840-1920, 1870-07-27
not DESTROYS Of buying a poison. The law pro-
hibits any one from kee ping gnnnnHder for sale

hibits any one nom keeping gunpowder for sale
II this law is enforced no injury can accrue.
Again, DR.. White says :-"It cannot be right in
protested Christian country to license and pro-
tect prostitution by law" This is the very ques
ton at tissue. deny deny this statement I thnx
II 10 right The experience Of the world In every
nation, and race and age, and cline, has proved
that prostitution must exist. There never was
community so small, whether governed by patr-
archs, kings or by democracy, whether religious
or religious, even in the very houses of those set
apart for the sake OF the purest of all religions,
where this most universal Of sins did not find an
entrance. Time has shown that it cannot DO
eradicated from humanity. II originates in per.
verseness OF natural attributes common to all ami
mai natures, which must, ike everything finite,
have its defects and its distortions.
We cannot prevent other sins, theft, drunken
ness murder, &C., but we can restrain them and
prevent their spreading and their evil conse-
quences, and we do so. We can do the same for
the sins flowing from prostitution, and they are
So far '"from giving prostitutes o certain re-
spectability," the legal restrictions and personal
examinations are, and are felt by them, degrading
and humiliating. / have personal knowledge of
the workings of the law in its moral as well as its
physical aspects, from having taken part in its en-
forcement in Paris, where for many months daily
made from sixty to ninety inspections, connected
with the police force Of that capital.
st. Louis has done good thing, and trust that
New York will follow it up and initiate the healthy
action of all the great and enlightened mctropoli-
tan centres OF the civilized world Then shall we
see an unwonted healthiness throughout our conn
try; rheumatisms and saltrheum, and scrofula and
consumption, and badness and host Of diseases
will be greatly diminished. Some mineral springs
will lose their alleged virtue, for the crowds will
no longer rush thither for their simple waters Of
which the vsiter is supposed to drink deeply,
while he hints of more potent pills and pow ders
in his pocket
scroinous children will disappear, eye iuGrma-
ries will be less needed and the host of new
female maladies:will lind; themselves comparatively
forgotten.
The effects of ungoverned prostitution are felt in
every circle of society; for its results are per-
petual. Consumption, alleged to be the cause OF
one-third of the entire deaths of New England,
originates, in very many eases, in transmitted
impurity Of the blood, which has come, perhaps,
from many generations back.
Whether the result of habitual wrong-doiDg or
accidental temptation, from an intentional sin or
the "slip" after too good dinner, the result is
the same. The innocent wife, the unborn child,
the hope of a family all are the sufferers.
Should not community protect-not the prosti-
tute--themselves against such accidents ?" There
are laws respecting liquor selling, to protect rail-
road travellers and against powder and nitro-gly
cerine, but the community suffers far more deeply
from the former evil than from all three together
One of our army corps during tho late war were
for weeks deprived Of all their superior officers,
the result of the entrance into captured town.
Judges, clergymen and the best of men are some
times led astray and they suffer- at serves them
their wives and families at home? Does it serve
them right?
If the women but knew the cause of many Of
their Affections, if they but realized how
much of the illness in their families and
how many of the little graves in Greenwood
are owing to such like past or recent unfortunate
accidents" they would call without ceasing for
protection. But, pure and coniding themselves
they look not into these hidden things; perhaps
IN spirit of vindictiveness they rejoice to think
that disease racks the bones and corrodes the
flesh of these frail creatures, more sinned against
than SHINING even in their worst aspects.
This subject is q very large one and many-sided
Perhaps, however, l may have said enough to
show that it has two sides, and that the legal
izng of prostitution" is not TO protect the soldiers
nor the women engaged in it, but the whole COM
munity, every one of whom has direct or III
direct interest in the establishment of such law
among US in New York.
A. X. GARDNER, NJ. d.