The record-union., 1891-02-15
THE AGE OF CONSENT.

The age of consent question is under
renewed debate at the East, the arena in
a late issue making it special feature
and contending that the age of consent
should be the age of majority. There is
certainly q great deal of sound reason
supporting this view of the question.
Primarily the age of consent was fixed
for two purposes, to protect first those
who, by reason of their tender years, are
presumed to be incapable of the wrong;
second, to protect men VINO, without such
guard of limitation, would be liable to
persecution and the wiles of the vi
cious female.
But the man, it is argued, should have
no such protection, since he should not
place himself in the condition to need it.
The real and chief reason for these laws
of limitation of responsibility are, there
fore, to protect female virtue and to
shield young girls from the criminal as
saults of men. The age at which women
may consent to their own ruin is vari-
ously fixed. At nearly every session of
the Legislature of this State for many
years, efforts have been made to raise or
to lower it. In thirty-six States of the
Union it is placed at or below fifteen
years, and in some as low as nine. In
but one, Kansas, is the age of majority,
or eighteen, made the age of consent.
There is great deal to be said in favor
of the Kansas limitation. If the law
does not permit the woman to contract, to
transact business in her own name, to
deed land or make lease, much less to
consent to marriage without approval by
her guardians, why should it not hold
her as legally incapable of consenting to
her ruin during minority?
The wide variation in the laws of the
States on this subject excludes the
thought that the age of puberty is con-
sidered seriously as a factor by legislators
in determining what shall be the rule 1t
cred from different standpoint,
and there is but one outside
of that which the advocates of the ma
jority age occupy, and that is one
that the age should be presumptive
of sufficient mental capacity and
knowledge to make the girl. ac-
countable to the law. But if there is
better reason for occupying such po-
sition than any other, then the age of ac-
countability for crime which is in most
States ten, should also be the age of con-
sent, though it is below the age of pu-
berty.
Is not then the better view that taken
| by the advocates of the majority age? If
the Government will not recognize the
capacity of the minor to contract, why
should it not protect her during the whole
period of minority against herself, since
moment than any agreement into which
the girl could possibly enter? It is re-
piled, however, that fixing the age of
consent does not in any wise remove the
protecting arm of the law; it only es-
tablishes rule that in assaults where the
victim is below tender age there shall
not be set up in defense any plea of ac-
quiescence.
To this it is replied that the age at
which she girl most needs the protection
of the law is that when her SUSCEPTIBLE
ties are most easily played upon, her pas
sions most readily aroused, and her ruin
most easily accomplished-the period
between puberty and eighteen. Thus, a
girl of seventeen loved by an honorable
man, willing and anxious to make her
his wife, and she being sufficiently
physically grown to become wife, can
not contract marriage with him, but if
made the victim of a scoundrel, she will
not be permitted to shield herself behind
the law, but must respond to his plea of
consent.
The Legislature of Kansas has certainly