him and tax him out of existence. I think he is lending himself to a base department of State service; but I also think that the State is tempting him; and I think that, in a symbolical way, all of you who approve of capital punishment ought to put the public hangman upon your calling list—or not exclude him because of his profession (which you regard as useful and necessary), but only because he happens to be personally unattractive to you. If you exclude him, because of his profession, while you consider his profession a necessity—you are guilty, I think, of discreditable conduct, and in order to stand morally right with yourselves you had better go (I speak symbolically) and leave cards on him to-morrow.
What I mean seriously to say is this: there is a great danger to moral integrity in any acceptance of social conditions which you would refuse to interpret into social intercourse. If you believe prostitution to be necessary for the safety of the home—which is the doctrine of some—you must accept the prostitute as one who fulfils an honourable function in the State. If you accept capital punishment, you must accept the hangman. If you accept meat, you must accept the slaughterman; if you accept sanitation you must accept the scavenger. If you accept dividends or profit from sweated labour, you must accept responsibility for sweated conditions, and for the misery, the ill-health, the immorality and the degradation which spring from them.
