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Josephine E Butler's Letter.
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codes of morals; the strict code to which women are held accountable, and the lax code which governs the conduct of men.
The other question which can very properly be discussed at the present time is, "Why in this country, and in all civilized nations, do one-half of the population die under five years of age, and in some countries a very large proportion under one year?"A letter was read from Mrs. Josephine E. Butler. As the experiment of licensing prostitution had been extensively tried in England, and she had watched the effects of the system not only in her own country but on the continent, her opinions on this question are worthy of consideration:
To the Annual Meeting of the National Suffrage Association in St. Louis:
Dear Friends—As I am unable to be present at your convention on May 7, 8, 9, and as you ask for a communication from me, I gladly write you on some of the later phases of our struggle against legalized prostitution. A brave battle has been fought in St. Louis against that iniquity, and we have regarded it with sympathy and admiration; but you are not yet safe against the devices of those who uphold this white slavery, nor are we safe, although we know that in the end we shall be conquerors. You tell me that "England is held up as an example of the beneficial working of the legalizing of vice." England holds a peculiar position in regard to the question. She was the last to adopt this system of slavery and she adopted it in that thorough manner which characterizes the Anglo-Saxon race. In no other country has prostitution been regulated by law. It has been understood by the Latin races, even when morally enervated, that the law could not without risk of losing its majesty violate justice. In England alone the regulations are law. Their promoters, by their hardihood in asking parliament to decree injustice, have brought on unconsciously to themselves, the beginning of the end of the whole system. The Englishman is a powerful agent for evil as for good. In the best times of our history my countrymen possessed preëminently vigorous minds in vigorous bodies. But when the animal nature has outgrown the moral, the appetites burst their proper restraints, and man has no other notion of enjoyment save bodily pleasure; he passes by a quick and easy transition into a powerful brute. And this is what the upper-class Englishman has to a deplorable extent become. There is no creature in the world so ready as he to domineer, to enslave, to destroy. But together with this development towards evil, there has been in our country a counter development. Moral faith is still strong among us. There are powerful women, as well as strong, pure, and self-governed men, of the real old Anglo-Saxon type. It was in England then, which adopted last the hideous slavery, that there arose first a strong national protest in opposition. English people rose up against the wicked law before it had been in operation three months. English men and women determined to carry abolition not at home only, but abroad, and they promptly carried their standard to every country on the continent of Europe. In all these countries men and women came forward at the first appeal, and said, "We are
