are rendering a service. There are about 3⅛ millions of unmarried men over 20 in England. Since we know that a very large proportion of them do not forgo sexual intercourse, this argues an immense discrepancy between our professions with regard to marriage and our performance. If social conditions were altered, should we not find that a large number of women at present unmarried would be willing to .enter into relations of love and affection with men, and might not this greatly diminish the "necessity" for prostitutes? We can most of us imagine a state of things infinitely preferable to the present, in which the virginity of some 3¼ millions of women is secured by the holocaust of the remaining quarter of a million, and all the attendant evils and disasters to the rest of humanity. What does the bachelor condition of so many men betoken? That they cannot, or will not undertake marriage. Is it not time that some serious thought were given to finding out what is wrong with marriage, or with women, or with men, or with all three?
But when "necessary" is used to signify the "necessary consequence of evil human nature," there is some truth in that; if we add, " and of evil human institutions," we may say that we have got the whole truth. If human nature and human institutions are evil in this direction, can we not alter them? Women certainly will not be content, with their new knowledge and their growing powers, to sit down helpless before these evils. We may be quite certain that they are going to move very
