Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1885-11-11

ment of vice and crime. Stead is right in
saving that the offense for which he must
serve term in debtors jail was his one
blunder. 1t is the one and only thing his
enemies have been able to fasten upon IN
all his exposures that was available. 1t
remains that the facts he gave to the pub
lie have not been, and cannot be, refuted.
1t remains that there is, and has long been
carried on a horrible traffic in female chill
dren in London, and that the police
authorities have been cognizant of and
parties to it. 1t remains that the laws of
England are inadequate to protect the
virtue of female children against the wiles
and assaults of rich roues and beastly lib
ertines. 1t remains that in boosted Eng
land there is more protection and aid
given to the owner of dog in search
ing for and recovering that property.
than to the parent who invokes the aid
Of the law to rescue his child from her
abductors. 1t remains that there is toll
tIdltu III d lCSuldl oiSL1 VI
marketing young virgins to the lusts of
bestial men, and that while a woman can
not at a given age consent to be married,
cannot make lawful contract or be held
for debt or served with civil process,
she can consent to be ruined. No matter
what influences are brought to bear, short
Of physical force, to bring her to ruin, she
has no remedy in the law. The Queen of
England and her council can serve the
cause of humanity by pardoning Stead for
his technical offense. The very fact of his
conviction and punishment by so light a
term Of imprisonment as three months,
and the light punishment of others charged
with him, who were not acting under the
same commendable motive that actuated
him, is damaging proof of the inadequacy
OF English law to right great wrongs
against females. Suppose Stead-to have
been one of the rascals whose horrible do
ings he exposed; suppose him to have, in
fact, been guilty of stealing from her pa
rents female child, and to have indie
Gently assaulted her by the aid of physi-
clan to ascertain her purity, how farcical
it would have been to have sentenced him
to Imprisonment in common jail for six
months, or even six years. Death on the
gibbet would be too much honor for such
beast.
THE Call puts it that the present excite
ment about the Chinese, and the assaults
upon them, are due to the fact that the
laws of Congress are not enforced-that
the people are simply trying to do what
the Federal authorities should have done.
In one sense this may be true But that
their inherent weakness, and their extreme
tenderness of the rights" of a lot of
foreigners who have no rights, except such
as are secured to them by treaty. Another
cause of the failure of the law is the
cupidity and rascality of some of our own
people, who barter their birth-rights for
the sake of what they can make out of the
business of smuggling in Chinese in de-
fiance of the law. The Federal officials
have not been over active, but give them
their due-they have been hampered at
every step, crippled by the contradictory
and uncertain interpretations of the law,
and the red tape and parchment orders of
the Washington authorities, and, above all,
have been made timid by the senseless
pirate of the sickly sentimentalists of the
East.