The New Godiva ..................................................................................................................................................1

Josephine Butler .......................................................................................................................................1

FROM JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. March, 1888. ................................................................................17

"'You would not let your little finger ache For such as these?' 'But I would die,' she said. VICTOR.

The last of them gone, thank Heaven! Now, at last, we shall get a couple of hours alone together. I seem

scarcely to have seen you since you came home. By the way, let me congratulate you on the figure you make

in society, after ten years in Queensland. Our friends tonight, I could see, imagined they had been asked to

meet a kind of savage, a sort of wildmanofthewoods, and were surprised, and a little disappointed, to

find a cultivated English gentleman, well up in the politics, literature, and even smalltalk of the day, and

You flatter me. More than once this evening, I felt painfully conscious of my social inexperience. When your

friend Aimee, for instance, sounded upon woman's suffrage, and eyed me with good humored contempt as I

feebly expounded my retrograde views on that subject, I devoutly wished myself back in the Bush.

I deny the contempt. Aimee is incapable of scorn, except for what is base. She is the greatest friend my wife

Indeed! I should have thought her too strongminded for the gentle Mary. You smile

At the notion of anything strongminded, in the vulgar sense of the term, in one of the most refined, tender,

and lovable of women. Oh, prejudice! what a miracleworker art thou! You met a charming, sympathetic,

feminine creature like Aimee, and you are prepared to fall at her feet. You hear that she wants the franchise,

and instantly, without any change in her demeanour, you dub her strongminded, a compound of Medusa and

Mrs.Jellyby, an unsexed, aggresive, officious, dangerous being, to whom all rational persons would give a

Aimee, at any rate, is fortunate in her champion! But, seriously, granting the prejudice, and attributing it, if

you like, to a very natural cause, my ten years' exile from the haunts of civilization and progress, I confess

that nothing has amazed me more in my solitude than certain recent developments of this woman question.

Reading, of course, can never take the place of personal intercourse with one's fellows, to which, for all

except scholars proper, it is at best an adjunct, and it is very possible that my mind has been warped by the

solitary perusal of what Aimee would call reactionary journalism and periodical literature. But failing such

personal intercourse, I have read all the more diligently, and, perhaps, I may say, honestly, and the result is a

feeling of some bewilderment at what would appear to be some very curious, if not threatening, social

phenomena. Even the strides of science, inconceivably marvellous though these are, seem to me to be less

portentious than the moral revolution which is rapidly modifying and displacing the sex.

Perhaps you would mention some of the more alarming of these phenomena, some of the graver symptoms of

You are laughing at me. You know better than I do what they are. In the first place, you have ladies' high

schools and collegeswomen receiving men's education and men's degrees. Then you have lady

doctorswomen familarized with dissecting roomsvivisecting rooms too, if our medical faculty is in the

right. Then you have lady members of schoolboards and boards of guardians; ladies wielding the municipal

franchise; ladies assembling in monster demonstrations to clamour for the parliamentary franchise. Literature,

of course, has been their special field for long; but, so far as I know, it is only of late years that they have

joined the ranks of atheists and agnostics, and that if you happen upon a magazine article of more than

common rancour against existing creeds, you are safe in taking for granted that it was written by a woman.

Last, but not least, you have women initiating and banding together to promote an agitation of too unsavoury

and repulsive a character even to name. How it has come to pass that any pureminded woman could mix

herself up in the remotest degree in so contaminating a matter, I am, for my own part, totally at a loss to

conceive. It is, of course, impossible not to credit the greater part of the large number of women who seem to

be concerned in the movement with honest, if mistaken and pernicious motives. I can only say that,

personally, I find it difficult to reconcile the notion of anything honourable or worthy with a "mission" of that

sort. To take the most charitable view of the thing, I do not suppose that misguided philantrophy, ignorant,

hysterical, feminine enthusiasm, even culminated in so painful and revolting a monstrosity as this of the

That will do. Your outburst is natural enough, and you will easily believe that it is not the first philippic of

the kind I have listened to. But before you go any further, I think it only fair to mention that the ranks of the

"shrieking sisterhood" have been swelled by a recent convert, in the person ofyour sisterinlaw, my wife!

Do not look so distressed. I expected all this and only said nothing of the matter in writing, because I felt a

Pardon me. There is no question of allowing between my wife and myself. That is the relation between

master and slave; or, if you will, between parent and child, not between two grown human beings endowed

with reason. I admire Mary's "enthusiasm" and I share it, for reasons which I shall presently explain.

Good heavens! The gentle Mary! The sweetest, tenderest, merriest little girl of eighteen, as I recollect her.

Visit her face too roughly!" If these things must beand from your espousal of the cause, I am willing to

believe there is more in it than I knowsurely they should be left to older women, to matrons and spinsters

who are tired of Dorcas meetings and districtvisiting. That they should take to political agitationand such

political agitationis bad enough. But a woman like Mary! born to enchant society! a woman you can hardly

I can best answer you by repeating a short conversation I had with her a few days ago. I found her one

evening sitting alonebeautiful enough in the bright lightthe face whiter than usual from a vigil that had

not been tearless; the blue eyes still large with tears, yet, oddly enough, a smile about the mouth. She saw me

start, and turned to me. "I was thinking," she said, "how glad I am that I have kept my good looks. I have

found out the use of being pretty now. It is a proof that you are in earnest." "How so?" I asked. "It is not

hard," she said, "to make yourself unpopular, when you have few popular gifts to sacrifice, when you are

wrecked by time, and, if not soured, saddenedas I suppose all thinking beings must beby age. But to

embrace an unpopular cause when you have, in a sense, the world at your feet; to lay yourself open to

misconception and calumny and scorn, and worse" (here she shuddered), "when you might surround yourself

with nothing but what is flattering and pleasantthis, I think, is to show that you are disinterested and

It would be difficult, certainly, to, look into Mary's eyes and imagine her to be anything else. But go on. Did

She did. After thinking for a few minutes very gravely, she began to smile again in that curious, tearful

manner. "And in another way," she said, "I have found it of use to be tolerably fresh and pleasant looking. It

puts me quicker en rapport with my girls. It shows them that at least I have known what it is to be young and

foolish. They write to me about my 'dear face,' my 'bright face,' my 'happy smile.' All that is useful, and not to

be despised. I notice there are so many women who take up 'work' of various kinds from motives which are

not the highest. They want occupation; they are tired of home restraints; they have had disappointments, and

'epousent Dieu, parce que'elles n'ont pu epouser leur cousin.' Now, in my case, my children can never think I

Not exactly. Mary is a believer in individual treatment, and, never has more than one with her at a time, if she

can help it. She says she gets at them better in one teteatete than she would do in twenty classes. Besides,

I should have said with the branch of rescue work which she has taken up. No. She has chosen a field which

she deems of more importance, because it is the most difficult of all, and the workers in it are scarce, as yet.

She and her friend Aimee visit the houses of illfame in the daytime, try to reach the inmates separately, and

when they have got them out, which they accomplish mainly by winning their affections, deal with each case

I am bewildered! To hear you talk so calmly of such horrors! As if it were a matter of course that one's wife

should be exposed to such contamination, should go freely into those dens of iniquity and associate on equal

terms with the wretched women whose very existence it is a shame she should know of!

I am only not surprised at your bewilderment, but I can sympathize with you in it. It is not till a man has

given long, patient, unprejudiced and unselfish thought to this matter, that any other attitude of mind can be

expected of him. We are all brought up, or have been until quite latterly, men and women alike, to ignore, as

far as it can be ignored, that outward and visible sign of an inbred taint and of widespread corruption known

as the "social evil." What we have heard of it in our youth, we have heard illicitly and by stealth; any

practical knowledge we may have of it in later years, we acquire also illicitly and by stealth, lest our mothers

and sisters, lest any pureminded woman, or, for the matter of that, highminded man, hear of our

wildoatsowing; or, if we are of a different calibre, and unfortunately brought, officially or otherwise, into

contact with the abominable thing, we get through our distasteful duties as rapidly as we may, thinking

nothing of the tremendous issues, national and domestic, that are involved, but only how we may pass on,

I confess I have not been in the habit of regarding this matter from a "national" point of view. What do you

I could talk to you on that chapter till morning. But I prefer to sum up in words not my own the substance of

what I should say. I can put my finger on the passageherein my commonplace book. It is from the first

He saw that now, as much as ever, the fate of nations depended, not on their material development, but, as

has been said in the Bible, and among all serious peoples, on the moral virtues, courage, veracity, PURITY,

justice and good sense. Nations where these were honoured prospered and became strong. Nations which

professed well with their lips, while their hearts were set on wealth and pleasure, were overtaken as truly in

I suppose there is no controverting the argument contained in that very eloquent passage. But I am afraid I am

a dense, matteroffact person, not very susceptible to flights of rhetoric, and I own I should prefer some less

As I said before, it would take me all night to prove it categorically. For the rest, I am not a great believer in

statistics. As George Eliot says, "the driest argument has its hallucinations," and I maintain that men may

dream in statistics as well as in demonstrations, and cut out for themselves illusory worlds in the shape of

returns, as well as axioms, "with a final exclusion of fact signed Q.E.D." But if you are a stickler for figures, I

will mention one or two. They will, I think, content you. The number of victimsI will call them by no

harsher name, lest I come short of the truththe number of victims to the selfishness of men, the

indifference of women, and the ignorance and callousness of society generally, in London alone has been

computed at 80,000. Suppose it is only half as many. Imagine forty thousand women living in a state of the

profoundest moral and physical degradation, in a servitude more abject than the most abject form of slavery

recorded in history, in a defilement as complete as anything we have shuddered at in the annals of ancient

Rome or modern Paris! The fact requires no comment. It is not an agreeable fact; it is not a cheerful fact. But

I think it cannot be gainsaid that it is an important fact, and that it behooves us as citizensI will not say as

humane and rational beingsto look it in the face. My commonplace book, which, with your leave, will

remain open while we are upon this subject, furnishes plenty of evidence, not of a "vague and general"

character, if more be desired. Here is a specimen. "I consider," says a writer who has earned the right to be

heard on this question, "the saddest and deepest of our social evils, the degradation of women, as

preeminently a sin against the commmunity, feeding the crime and disease of the country to a degree that few

altogether realize. Out of 18,700 summary female convictions in Ireland, 11,463, or 61.3 per cent. were

prostitutes. The statistics of disease would show more terrible results still, could they be obtained." Have you

had enough? Or will you hear another fact? Our slavepopulation of degraded girls is of a transitory, not of a

permanent character. About twofifths of them marry. What of their subsequent history? What of their

offspring? What of a society recruited from such elements, of a lower class so mothered? But, as I said, to

my own mind no figures are needed to expose the horrors of this national sore we hide indeed, but secretly

nourishI had almost said cherishat any rate, accept as a disposition of things that always must be, as it

always has been. For one whose eyes are opened, the proofs of the injury it occasions to the community, the

deepseated evil of which it is at the same time cause and effect, are not far to seek. They are in every

May I interrupt you to ask a question in passing? I do not understand why you insist on calling these

wretched women victims and slaves. Surely they are free agents like the rest of us, and have themselves to

Are women free agents? Do we consider our own womenthe women of our own classfree agents? Even

when we have braced and strengthened them with all that care and culture can do for them; when, amid the

amenities of home life, we have taught them German and music, possibly Greek and mathematics; do we

consider them, so trained and panoplied, fit to be launched upon the world alone at fifteen, sixteen? Do we

not look upon they as quasi children while they are in their teensindeed, in many cases, till they marry, at

whatever age? Do we not foster them, shelter them, shield them, demur to their going abroad

unchaperonedcontinue, in short, to father them? Yet these girls who make our streets unholy and our

nights hideousyou persist in calling them women! What wondrous hallucination is this? Is it a faroff

memory of the "strange woman" of Proverbs? And do you seriously believe that three thousand years have

wrought no change in this thingthat the Judea of Solomon's time was in all respects as the London of our

own, that "the profligate married woman of mature years, described in those verses, bore the smallest relation

to the wretched, hungry,ind ignorant children who infest our streets?" Again, it is scientific fact that a rapid

physiological development is frequently accompanied by a sluggish mental one. The woman of sixteen is an

Almost always in experience that is calculated to do her any good. Of what use is it to her to know that

infamy exists years before her sister of the upper classes suspects it? How does she acquire the knowledge?

From the lips of the only teacher that ever kept man or woman steadfast in innocency of lifethe lips of

love? Or from her low surroundings, her unscrupulous companions, her coarse, unlovely mode of life, and

those harsh threats which sow the seeds of every evil they are intended to avert?

It is the matter of fact that these girls are for the most part very young in years?

It appears from the statistics of Rescue Societies that the greater number are led astray before they are

eighteen. I will not touch upon the appalling fact of the increasing desecration of mere children. You know

that up to thirteen the law affords them a certain protection. After that we have ordained that these infants in

mind and will, these unstable ones, these, orphaned onesfor orphaned they usually are of all true

succourshall be free agents. If they had so much good fortune as to possess material wealth, we should

guard that for them till they were twentyone. No plea of "consent" would avail one who should seek to

defraud tnem of their gold. But, if in a moment of giddiness and blindnessah me! of hunger and of

anguishthey barter away the one priceless possession that they have, what is that to us? She is of age, ask

her, she shall speak for herself. She isthirteen! Good God! It makes the blood curdle. Upon the condition

of public opinion which renders such a state of the law tolerable for another hour, I will not trust myself to

enlarge. I will merely turn again to the writer whose impassioned words I have quoted more than once. "As

long as ruined girls are talked of as a necessity of a complex civilization, which delays early marriage; as

long as a high price is forthcoming for the commodity; as long as Englishmen remain on a level with the Zulu

chieftain who, when the English Government sent him a present of wagons and wheelbarrows, exclaimed, in

fine scorn, 'What's the use of those things for bearing our burthens whilst we have plenty of women?' as long

as the British Zulu says complacently, 'What is the use of our bearing that burthen of selfcontrol which

civilized life throws upon us, whilst we have plenty of women to crush and degrade,' so long the demand will

Stop a moment. You are going too fast. Your zeal, which I will admit to be righteous, seems to me to be

slightly outrunning your discretion. I do not believe that the majority of men reason in that manner.

Oh, for that matter, neith1er do I. I am speaking of their practical, not of their ostensible reasoning. It matters

very little to you how men talk, if once you have the unlucky knack of examining the logic of their actions.

Heaven forbid. My quarrel is with principles, not with individuals. They are the victims of a false public

opinion, that is all. For the most part they have no conception themselves where that same unconscious logic

of theirs really lands them. I think well enough of my species to believe that when any average man does

know it, does learn, by careful investigation, observation, and reflection, the true position in which he is

placed by the anomalies of our present social code, he repudiates that code as he repudiates cowardice and

baseness, and everything that dishonours, deforms, and degrades his manhood. For the rest, if I exaggerate in

discussing this question, you must condone it on the score of the centuries of numbness, of deadness, that

have surrounded the aspect of it upon which we are just now dwelling. We have hitherto exaggerated our

blame of the weak woman. We may be pardoned for temporarily exaggerating our blame of the strong man.

Let our endeavour be to fix our eyes neither upon man nor woman, but upon truth only, and the balance may

be trusted to redress itself of its own accord. Meanwhile, there are heroic spirits who are not afraid of

exaggerating their own share of responsibility in this matter. There is a young mana kind of

Galahadbrave as only the very pure can bea true knight of modern timeswho is giving his life to the

cause. He once went up to a group of outcasts, and told them from his heart, with all the pitying respect and

courtesy due to their spoiled womanhood, that when he thought of how men had wronged them, he was

You speak as though none of them had ever tempted menyoung men especiallyto evil.

I never hear that argument without thinking of that manly excuse of Adam's: "The woman whom Thou gavest

to be with me, she gave me of the tree, and I did eat." But granting, as you know that I do abundantly grant,

that most men are simply without the means of knowing their real duty in relation to women; that we wrong

them only less cruelly than we wrong their temptresses, that we educate them falsely at home, at school, and

in the world,are we, on that account, to keep up our pariahsystem with regard to the weaker class of

transgressors only? How did they become such? From choice? I answer most deliberatelyNo. In Paris, the

"brothel of Europe," as it has been called with painful fitness, it has been computed that only about five per

cent. of these poor souls voluntarily choose and like their life. They are in prison and cannot come forth. The

first false step has placed them under the social ban. Henceforth retrieval is made wellnigh impossible. They

must "tempt" or starve. They are the scorn of women, the slaves of men. The leaden pall of agelong custom,

of tradition, of conventionality, has descended upon them, as it were, in an instant, and effectually shut off

from them all hope of rising into a purer air. Last of all, the State steps in to recognize their "trade" and fit

them for it, to carefully exclude them from every constitutional, as they are already excluded from every

social, privilege, to brand them like cattle, and set them apart for uses less noble than those to which we

But are we to condone impurity in a woman? Is there not something to be said for the "agelong custom"

which ostracizes a fallen woman? Is she not a traitress to the cause which it is her special mission to

No doubt the same reflection occurred to the Scribes and Pharisees when they brought the woman taken in

adultery to One whom they suspected of disaffection towards certain of their existing institutions. But His

pure eyes saw, through the mists of a dim nature, a fairer day arise, when the responsibility of the

familythat unit of the State upon which its stability add strength dependwould not be thrown alone upon

its weaker members; when men, of stronger passions if you will, but also stronger in the power of

selfcontrol, would scorn to exact from women a standard of moral purity they were not prepared to conform

to themselves. Tracing upon the sand those mystic signs whose purport we know not, we know that his

passoniate soul was kindling with pity and shame, and the sorrowful indignation of the man who, amidst

prevailing obscurantism, apprehends truth, who, amidst cynicism and cruelty, hungers after love. And those

scathing words when his trance was ended, "He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at

her," how is it that they have not branded for ever our unequal moral standard with the infamy it deserves?

That it is an unequal standard must occur at times to every one who thinks. But I have been accustomed to

explain it to myself on the ground that it is based upon a natural law. The infidelity of the woman saps the

very foundations of family life, confuses offspring, destroys the home, whereas the license of the man

Creates a pariahclass which cannot exist without the most deadly injury to the family. How fatal to family

life the existence in our midst of a class of women dedicated to impurity must be it would seem needless to

demonstrate, were it not for the paradox current in some quarters that its maintenance is actually a safeguard

of the family! There is no time in a desultory conversation like the present to refute this and such like

arguments seriatim, We are but cursorily skiniming the surface of a vast question, which branches out at

every turn into fresh ramifications. But I may tell you that science, medical and economic, is hourly proving

the fallacy of any such sup position. For the rest mere commonsense, without the aid of science, ought

surely to suffice. As well keep an open cesspool at your door on the plea of its being a safeguard to health,

as a moral plaguespot like this in your great centres of population to preserve the purity of domestic life

intact. Apart from tlhe more obvious and hideous dangers, must not such an institution react in a thousand

subtle ways upon the atmosphere of our homes? Is it not a standing education in selfishness to our sons, in

Ah! you should hear Mary on that chapter. Her education, as you know, was neither more nor less Pharasaic

than is usual with girls of her class. But she has often told me that when she made for herself the discovery

that these nameless ones were her sisters, made of her own flesh and blood, only poor, only weak, only

ignorant, only ground into a foul serfdom by the tender mercies of our Christian civilization, it revolutionized

her life. She had been taught that it was wrong to know of their existence. When the scales fell from her eyes,

she saw that in that teaching lay the root of half their wrongs. And she has told me, moreover, that it would be

well if a childish, ignorant hardness were the worst result upon the characters of women, of this division of

their sex into two classes, one to be cherished, the other to be destroyed. She has noted in some circles she

was at one time a good deal thrown withand who that has been much in society of late years will not

confirm her words?she has noted a deterioration among her girl companions and among women generally,

which she cannot but attribute to the same source. She says that in the conditions of modern society it is

impossible that the contamination should not spread beyond the limits we have tried to assign to it. One result

of the increasing disproportion of women to men has been a tendency on the part of women of the upper

classes to ape men's habits, amusements, dress and so forth, and among other things, to adopt more and more

the moral tone which men think good enough among themselves. How can the constant companions of "fast"

men fail to become "fast" themselves? and, in the over crowded state of the marriagemarket, not endeavour

to outdo in dress, manners, ay, and in morals, their most formidable competitors? It is their metier to affect

the style the men they consort with most admire, and who shall blame them? When men really worship and

reverence purity in womennot in the woman they intend to make the mother of their children, but in

I suspect from what you say that the tone of society generally has not improved during the last few years. I

have been leading the life of a recluse, and though you are pleased to compliment me on having preserved a

certain veneer of civilization, our talk tonight has made me feel more than ever behind the world. I do not

recollect in my college and lawstudent days such a condition of moral degeneracy as you describe.

Because, on the one hand, you had small natural affinity with it, and on the other, it never occurred to you to

take cognizance of it from the, so to speak, external standpoint of the social reformer. Besides, it is true that

matters have not changed for the better in recent years. How should they? We are reaping as we have sown.

We have, as a community, sown to the flesh, and, as a community, we are reaping corruption. I have here a

collection of notes, culled at random from the current literature of the day, and from my own personal

experience, bearing on this part of our subject. Many of them are insignificant enough in themselves, merely

The first I open to is from a book which has recently had an almost miraculous amount of success among all

classes of readers. It purports to be the history of a scholar, a Christian, and a gentleman of the seventeenth

century, whose varied culture and catholic breadth of spirit are probably intended as a model for all time.

This is his attitude with regard to the virtue of chastity:"As a courtier and man of the world [John

Inglesant] was profoundly tolerant of error and even of vice (provided the latter did not entail suffering on

Before I reply to that question let me give you the absolutely identical views of a gentleman of the nineteenth

century,not a notorious roue whom we, I mean whom some of us, would be shy of admiting into our

familiesbut a man neither better nor worse than other men, a "good fellow," kindhearted, honourable, and

popular in society. He figures in one of Whyte Melville's later novels, called "Roy's Wife." He is, or imagines

himself to be, deeply in love with a good woman, when he makes the following proposition to a friend. "Dine

with me quietly, en garcon. I've a box at the Deucalion. We'll see the Ugly Duckits rather a good

burlesqueand bring What'shername back to supper. It wouldn't be bad fun." Now, I need not point out to

you that the author who credits a young Englishman with so much respect for women in general, and for the

woman he loves in particular, is not one who is drawing on his imagination. He was, on the contrary, better

qualified than most novelists to describe the bachelor life of our gilded youth. He was himself of a nobler

strain than the FitzOwens. Commenting upon this young gentleman's theory of life, he says"Lord

FitzOwen's code of morals was one of which we cannot approve, the result of a false system of education.....

He could see that it was wrong to disturb wedded happiness and the peace of families, to blight a girl's hopes,

or taint a woman's reputation before the world with the lightest breath of shame. Such injuries he would no

more have inflicted than he would have .... struck a man when he was down. To his own code of social

morality as it may be called, he adhered strictly, but this left a wide range wherein he felt at liberty to disport

himself, as he pleased." Is not that John Inglesant to the letter? "Tolerant of vice provided it did not entail

suffering on any innocent victim, looking upon it as a natural incident in human affairs."

Precisely; and I say again, what more can you expect? You are not, surely, sanguine enough to suppose that

Why? The thing is an absurdity. And so about this pariah class, as you call it. It always has existed, and it

Spare me that timehonoured argument. It has been pleaded against every reform that ever germinated in the

brain of prophet or seer, and, having drained his heart's blood, and procured for him the proud reward of cross

or stake, went forth triumphant through an adoring world, and became a truism on children's lips. I am not so

credulous as to suppose that we can eradicate vice any more than that we can eradicate murder or theft. What

I do maintain is that we can eradicate tolerated and approved and legalized vice, and that by a due leavening

of public opinion we can place it where it should bein the same category with murder and theft. Have we

ceased to regard the soul as of greater worth than the body? It is the murder of the soul. Do we revere the

Let me recall to you that social code of Lord FitzOwen's. He would not "strike a man when he was down."

That would have been as heinous as to cheat a man at cards, break your solemn word to a man, be guilty, in

short, of any dishonourable act towards your equal and associateman. But when it comes to a

womanwhen it is a woman who is "down"what then? Plunge her lower! Heap infamy upon her! Place

one more stumblingblock in the way of her retrieval! Do your best that she shall continue a byword! You

have law on your side, you have society on your side, you haveor until quite recently you hadwomen

"alwayshasbeenandalwaysmustbe" as your excuse. Against you, you have onlyshall I call it the

law of God?the immutable law of Goodness which will have mercy and not subscriptions to charitylists,

and justice rather than many missionary societies. But we are digressing. I will now give you a "straw" of a

more portentous character. I have it recorded here in the terse form of a letter addressed not a great while

since to a newspaper by a lady signing herself "A Soldier's Sister." Referring to the case of an exofficer of

the British Army, who was cashiered for what the judge who sentenced him described as "a wicked outrage

which I must call cowardly and dishonourable," she remarks that "the world to her has been a drearier place

since 359 members of a leading club have pronounced that the conduct for which he was expelled the army

has not detracted from his character as a gentleman." Again I refrain from commenting upon the moral

condition of a society in which such a phenomenon is possible. Let us pass on. My next extract is from a

Times' Parliamentary report of last session. It shows, as you will see, that there is something irresistibly

ludicrous to our senators in women meddling with politics at all; but that when they meddle with them at the

expense of their dearest prejudices, and of their keenest susceptibilities, when they meddle with them at the

cost of their happiness, their peace of mind, their healthah me! of their reputation itselfthat then the joke

You refer, of course, to the annual difficulty of clearing the Ladies' Gallery when the objectionable Acts are

under discussion. I cannot bring myself to see that it is in any way necessarynay, that it is not highly

Waiving that question for the moment, you must agree with me that the manner and mood in which its

clearance is sought to be effected leave something to be desired. In the course of a brief disussion on the

motion to exclude strangers, the Times reports "laughter" no less than five times. After this the common talk

about Christianity elevating the social status of women, about chivalry "through which the reverence of man

for woman became an integral part of the moral structure of society!" smacks somewhat of irony. "Integral

part of the structure of society!" We have not learned the A B C of true reverence for women.

You surprise me: one would expect the graver aspects of these questions to appeal to men responsible for

The causes of the anomaly, like the causes of everything else, lie buried deep in the past, and would require

half a lifetime to disinter and disentangle. But one broad fact may be stated, without fear of contradiction,

which accounts for a good deal. The Christian Church (though the world owes to her the first recognition of

personal purity, as a binding obligation on man and woman alike) in violent reaction against the excesses of

the wornout Pagan world, started off in very early times on the wrong tack. She made the grandI had

almost said the irretrievable errorof seeking to be wiser than nature, wiser than God. Instead of placing

purity where it was intended to be, in the very head and forefront of all the moral virtues, she gave it a second

place; she subordinated purity, with marriage for its end and crown, and conjugal fidelity for its sacred duty

and ideal, to a fantastic invention of her own called virginity. The result was, as might have been foretold, a

speedy lowering of the chimerical standard, and a hopeless confusion of moral ideals. Concessions had to be

made to the weak, sin had to be winked at; the doctrine of the "higher spiritual life" had to be inventedby

Because a dual standard of morality can by no possibility have any other parentage. As soon as you admit

that there can be a different standard of right and wrong, in essential matters, for pope and emperor, for monk

and man of the world, for clergy and laity, you open the door to evrey sort of logical fallacy, and every form

of creeping, contemptible iniquty. You speedily reach a state of things typified by the immortal grocer of

"sandthesugarandthencomeintoprayers" celebrity, or by the Italian cutthroat who mutters an orison

What about the Reformation? Did not the vessel of the church shift her course a little at that time?

She did little more than exchange the Scylla of ceremonial for the Charybdis of dogma. And between these

two she has most pitifully wavered ever since; the two opposing parties, Orthodox and Heretic, Catholic and

Protestant, High and Lowcall them what you willtoo much occupied in vituperating each other to notice

that all the time the angel of Goodness was standing without, forgotten and alone, yea, though his

outstretched hands bore the print of the nails, and his face was, as it were, the face of the Christ.

Let me remind you, I am not speaking of individuals, of the handful of men who have battled in all ages, and

in all communions, and who, as I thankfully acknowledge, are battling at the present moment, with real, not

with what Milton called scarecrow, sins. But ask the average clergyman or minister whether he preaches

against fornication, as St. Paul did. Your invariable reply will be something in which the phrase "mixed

But do you not sympathize with him in his difficulty? How can he shape his discourse so that it shall not

I wonder whether these nice considerations weighed with St. Paul, when he lifted up his voice against the

torrent of evil he saw threatening to overwhelm the world, or with the Baptist, when he cried to men in the

wilderness to flee from the wrath to come! But tell me, where do you hear even the secondary causes of

immorality denounced as they should be, and could be, without offense to any, from every pulpit in the land?

Where is the prophet, who proclaims that selfish luxury, that busy idleness, that the life devoted to pleasure,

to sport, to tittletattle, or worse, is absolutely and unconditionally sinful, more sinful I say it without a

shadow of hesitationmore sinful than the life of the wretched housebreaker or pickpocket, than the life of

the childharlot, be she nine or nineteen? Where do you hear the hideous forced overcrowding of our

people, and the avariciousness of landlords, and supineness of munipalities, to the health and morals of the

people denounced as they ought to be? Where do you hear the miserable condition of the large majority of

working women and domestic servants exposed as it should bethe horrible extortion and oppression,

whether voluntary or not, of the employers of women's labour, the starvation rate of wages, literally forcing

them into sin, the total absence of every form of innocent recreation such as the young need, of all cheerful

To hear you talk, one would suppose the "Song of the Shirt" might have been written yesterday.

Ay, and its sequal the "Bridge of Sighs." There are at the present moment in London about 60,000 working

girls earning wages barely sufficient to support life. What do you say, for instance, to shirtmaking at 2d.,

1�d., some time one penny each? The white slave, thus remunerated, can make six, or eight, perhaps even a

dozen shirts in a day, by sitting at her machine from six in the morning till twelve at night. Out of this

stupendous wage, she has to find her own thread. Or her trade, perchance, is the making of women's ulsters.

For one of these garments, selling at 7s. 11d., she will be paid 2d.; for one selling at 25s., 6d. She can, with

difficulty, make six in a day; thus earn a glorious income, out of which, as you may imagine, she scarcely

misses 5d. for every dozen ulsters spent in twist and cotton! Or she is an apprentice, aged fifteen, in a house

of business, a mile or two from her home. The walk is long, the hours of attendance are long, and she is often

And your theory is that this miserable and really iniquitous rate of payment. is one of the great feeders of the

Is it necessary of theories? Do not the facts stare one in the face? And yet we scorn, and yet we condemn, and

yet we pass by on the other side. How can we expect selfcontrol, selfdenial, selfrespect, from those poor

shivering, underfed bodies, to whom a hearty meal, a warm good garment, an hour's frolic, comes only in the

form of temptation? It grows late, and the notebook, which you have had too much of already, must be put

away for tonight, or I could poison your dreams with some entries under this head.

A lady who devotes herself to some of these friendless ones, principally young servants who have forfeited

their characters, writes:"The feeding of poor girls at home has much to do with their unsatisfactory service.

They go with a weak body to work hardno appetite when they can get food." Another lady says:"I know

of workroom where they have no fires until a certain date no matter how cold it may be. During last

November the girls suffered horribly, and for one of them I had to procure a ticket as outpatient to a

hospital, her delicacy having been chiefly induced through constant suffering from cold whilst at work." A

doctor at Islington informs a daily paper that "within half a mile of my place there are a large number of retail

establishments, chiefly of the cheap and competing kind, and at the present time I have on my books more

than a dozen patients, young women, whose ailments are entirely attributable to the excessive number of

hours they are compelled to work, and to their being constantly on their feet." These same patients are

described as "some weak and fragile, others more robust, but all alike suffering intense pain, the natural

consequence of being on their feet thirteen or fourteen hours every day, and sixteen or seventeen on a

Stay a moment. Time was made for slaves. Do you know you have touched me a good deal for these young

If I could tell you all that I have heard from a woman's lips of what women, even women of the

wellnourished classes, suffer from the frailty of their bodies, the chronic lassitude, the regiment of woes

falling under the to us mysterious head of "nerves," the hidden sufferings of potential and actual motherhood

which suck the energy and verve from life, as we men know itbut I have said enough. Cecil! it is time we

shook off the selfishness of our cynicism, whether of word or act, and rose to a manlier view of our

responsibilities towards the other sex. It is time we assumed something of the prerogative of strength;

protection, even of the vile; pity, even for the temptress, spoiled, seared, bestialized by sin; reverence even

for that most horrible, and happily rare thing, a womanhood tainted from the birth by hereditary guilt, and

Believe me, I do not speak mockingly when I say that I am ashamed to interrupt you with a reflection that has

occurred to me more than once in the course of your remarks. But you will not misunderstand me. You have

incidentally referred to a difference of opinion as to the necessity for the existence of an outcast class. I think

you have disposed of your opponent's case from the more strictly social point of view. But you have touched

very lightly upon the hygienic question. If I am rightly informed, the medical faculty are not altogether at one

upon the point, and I understand that some doctors of repute are in the habit of giving young men counsel

Believe me, I do not speak thoughtlessly when I say that I am ashamed, always deeply ashamed and

humiliated, when I am called upon to encounter that argument. It shows a profound ignorance of sound

human physiology, which teaches us that selfgovernment is the principle of individual health, and chastity

the condition a strong national growth. Two words should guide medical counselTemperance and

Occupation. But usually I prefer to meet this difficulty with a reductio ad absurdum. If the existence of a class

of het�r� is a necessity, it should be not only, as indeed it is already, recognized by law as an industry like

any other, but respected socially as an important factor in the national health and wellbeing. It should be

recruitedif there is anything in the enthusiasm of humanity not solely from the daughters of the people,

because forsooth, they are the most defenceless; but fathers and brothers of the welltodo classes, willing

Not in this connection. What do you say, for instance, to the jest of a magistrate at Orleans the other day,

who, when a poor victim was about to name the wealthy scoundrel who had been her moral murderer, shut

her mouth with, "Hush! Do not compromise the honour of a respectable man!" But this in passing. No, I do

but depict the logical consequences of these theories about the necessity of vice. All I have said should,

logically, take place, and something more. We should pull down, not only our churchesthat goes without

sayingbut the institutes and lecturerooms where we inculcate humanity, ay, and the hospitals and asylums

where we practise it. We should once and for ever do away with our religion, of course, but equally with our

cant of virtue, of altruism, of a race made perfect by upward striving, and glorious by selfrenunciation. If we

are so inconceivably selfish, cruel, and bestial as to set aside in cold blood a certain number of thousands of

poor girlsnot being OUR OWN sisters and daughtersas a holocaust; natural and necessary for the good

of the communitywhy, we may talk of Suttee and the torturing of Hindu widows, we may talk of the

atrocities of Mohammedan harems and of Australian savagedomthe only difference between these

degraded barbarians and ourselves will be that we shall be a thousand times more degraded, more

contemptible, more unspeakable than they, for we have prided ourselves on our civilization, we have prated

of virtue, we have received, century after century, upon our foreheads the symbol of selfeffacement, the sign

of the Cross, and we have called ourselves for ages by the name of the pure and compassionate Christ.

I was thinking how our conversation began. Was it not with Aimee and the "shrieking sisterhood?" I should

be glad to hear more of your views on the subject of that agitation, and its relation to the broader questions

That must be for another day. In the mean while, beware of regarding it as anything but what it isa

symptom of a great moral revolution. It is not a spasmodic, isolated phenomenon; it is a precursor of a chance

already stirring in the secret heart of multitudes. The smuggling of those amazing and iniquitous Acts into our

Statutebooks (in other countries, as you may not know, they exist only in the form of police regulations)

was but the spark falling on the tinder, the last drop in the overfull cup. Like the great kindred movement for

the abolition of slavery, this movement is the product of the world's growth in the humaner virtues, of the late

blossoming of lovingkindness, mercy and equity. We may call in question, if we choose, its mode of

operation, the details of its programme, the feasibility, nay the sanity of its immediate aims; about the

principles which gave it birth are their own justification, and carry within them the germs of future, absolute

Who said that history was prophecy? Even a superficial study of history makes one something of a

soothsayer. There was a time when the conscience of the world was ripe for a protest against the traffic in

human flesh. The world knew it not. Slavery always had been, and, so it was said, always would be; but those

who could read the signs of the times knew that it was doomed, and that had the nations been polled, and the

result been a minority of one against the fated institution, still that the world would come round to that

minority of one. Emerson spake truly. And so it is now. The world is ripe, not for perfection, not for Paradise,

not for Utopia, but for the abolition of vice legalized, vice patented, vice tolerated in society with a toleration

strangely like acquiescence, if not approval. That portent that struck you just know with horror and

amazementthe descent of pure women into the arenais perhaps the most momentous of them all. Well

may it amaze, even appal you! It is a measure of the significance of the combat. This protest of women

against the systematized degradation of their sex, against the desecration of marriage, against the

undermining of the family, is a profounder thing than you know. It is unperceived, ninetenths of it; it is as

yet immature; but it is growing fast; its roots are striking deep into the soil of the civilized world, and it will

There was a picture of Long's in the Academy two or three years backyou were in the Bushwhich held

me spellbound. It represented Esther, the Queen, seated in royal apparel. She is about to carry out her grand

resolve. It is a question of life or death. In her fixed pathetic eyes you read, "If I perish, I perish." You cannot

take away your own from them. The details, the technique of the picture are lost in that absorbed, absorbing

gaze; tranquil, heroic, pitiful. I think of Esther now as symbolic of the woman of the nineteenth century,

sacrificing life itself in the cause, not merely of her people, not even of her sex, but of humanity.

Oftener I compare her to Godiva, staking something dearer than life in the high emprise, stripping herself

bare of the very vesture of her soul, rather than see the poor of her people become a prey, the rich given over

to selfish indulgence and shortsighted cruelty. It is no hyperbolical phrase that I use when I say, "dearer than

For such as these?' 'But I would die,' she said." the Godiva of old. And she would have died, probably

would have preferred death to the grisly alternative which she accepted for the people's sake.

From the new Godiva, to, a harder thing than the mere laying down of one's life has been required. From her,

too, it has been exacted to place upon the altar her reputation, exposing herself to something worse than mere

physical torture, to a species of misconception more exquisitely agonizing than the most ingenious

refinement of bodily suffering. For her the delight of living is gone,, the invigorating charm of social

pleasures, the early, innocent gladness of the world. Friendship, the consoler, is often spoiled for her;

sometimes she is cut off from lovethe breath of life. Over all her pathway a shadow lies, and when her

eyes are brightest, and her talk gayest, the heaviness of this thing is at her heart.

Oh, the leaven has been working for years! Thinking women of the last generation saw well enough that the

existing social code was rotten, a pitiable convention, one half prudery, the other half laxity "Whose

They saw even then that something less hollow, less negative, less hypocritial, was required. They craved

even then a more passionate goodness, a more militant purity; and in their lives and writings they presaged

dimly the bursting forth of the flame that was smouldering in their day. The works of Elizabeth Barrett

Browning are charged with this sense of crying need and of coming change. It was strong in Harriet

Martineau and in Mary Carpenter. Earlier still, it kindled the "genius of benevolence" in Elizabeth Fry, and

drew her, tender and tremulous and selfdistrustful as she was, with irresistible force to the filth and infamy

of the female side of Newgate. Were that grand spirit among us now, with what holy joy would she have

united in the crusade initiated by her spiritual daughter, Josephine Butler, supported in different ways and at

different points of the field of battle by women like Fanny Vicars and Ellice Hopkins, Frances Power Cobbe,

Elizabeth Blackwell, and Emily Venturi, and sanctioned by a name dear to every English heart, the honoured

And the name of my sisterinlawthe sweet child I rememberis to be added to the bederoll. I still

Mary and I sometimes agree that heroism a deux is not so very heroic after all, and that martyrdom together

would be quite possible to bear. But since when have reformers trodden a primrose path. Since when have

they not been despised and rejected of menmen and women of sorrows and acquainted with grieffrom

whom the world they shed their blood for hides, as it were, its face? And then, there is solace in high

endeavour, and the very balm of Gilead in a great conviction. This new conception of one moral law for man

and woman, this latewon truth that prudery is not purity, and that laxity is merely baseness, that, if there be

any virtue or any praise, the "sacred human principle of sex" is to be recognized from the first with a reverent

candour, and trained from the first with religious awe, and that only sin is shamefulthis, too, has its

And the rest Time rectifies. The day is not far distant when we shall look back with a certain ashamed

incredulity at our past selveswe who have mocked, or opposed, or stood aloofand admit that while we

loathed to see the people overtaxed, while we shuddered and blundered, multiplied churches, subscribed to

charities, tinkered at our Poor Law and fought over our School Boards, some women had had the

inconceivable courage and devotion to grapple personally with the most deadly, difficult and distasteful of all

the causes at the bottom of the pauperism, crime, and threatened national disintegration with which we were

A LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF WOMEN AT WASHINGTON FROM JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. March, 1888. 17

Being prevented by domestic circumstances from attending your assemblies personally, I am glad to entrust a

few words of greeting to my dear and honored friend, Mrs. STEWARD, who has consented to cross the

Atlantic, at my earnest request, as a delegate from our Ladies' National Association. That Association was

formed in the winter of 1869, having for its definite aim the obtaining of the repeal of the Acts of Parliament

of 186669 for the State regulation of vice; or, in other words, for the provisioning of the army and navy (not

in Great Britain alone, but in our Indian Empire and all our colonies) with selected and superintended and

healthy women. "A celibate soldiery," it was said by our heathen legislators of that day, "require such a

Now, I have no reason to suppose that this special subject (always a mournful and repellant one) will be

formally brought forward in your Convention; although the kindred and closelyallied subject of personal

and social purity will surely be so. It would, however, be impossible for me either to appear at or write to

your Convention with the aim of furnishing a contribution to your deliberations, except in connection with

my own life work, and the deep convictions which instigated that lifeworkand which have become even

The Committee of our Ladies' National Association therefore strongly desired that a delegate should be

selected from our midst, who had been associated in that work from an early period; and such an one is Mrs.

Steward, who has been an indefatigable worker, not only in England, but in Belgium, in pursuit of and for the

saving of the Englishgirl victims who were bought, stolen and destroyed under this diabolical system of

Stateprotected vice in that country. There is now a crowd of younger workers who are bravely preaching the

purity crusade and doing excellent vigilance work; while there are few of the veterans left who inaugurated in

1869 the fierce contest with our Government, the Houses of Lords and Commons, the Medical Boards, the

Press, and the Upper Classes generally, in order to gain the abolition of the viceprotecting lawsand to

assert the equality of the Moral Law for two sexes, as well as the dignity and sacredness of Womanhood.

Among those veteran workers were included the names of Florence Nightingale, Harriet Martineau, Mary

Somerville, Mary Carpenter and others. Some are gone to their rest; others are aged and worn, and waiting

for their call home. Those who remain hold together and work together still, bound to each other by strong

affection, and by the memory of past suffering and conflict shared together. Of this group Mrs. Steward is

It may not be out of place here, in order to set forth the motives which drove us to devote ourselves to this

Crusade before all others, to quote some words of mine which were drawn from me at a great meeting in

Leeds, in July, 1870. Some of us had been long working for the "Higher Education of Women." A council for

that end had been formed, embracing members from all the northern parts of England. I was for three years

the President of that Council; but in 1870, feeling impelled to resign the presidentship, I thought it right to

"There were gentlemen present who would give some account of the educational movement now going on in

our country in its different branches. She proposed to give a short sketch of the educational efforts now being

made on the Continent, under the auspices of the International Association of Women. They had arrived at a

period of the world's history when the injunction, 'Look not every one to his own things, but to the things of

others,' had become applicable to nations as well as to individuals. In fact, England could not safely live any

longer for itself only, nor could any country; and she thought there was an exclusiveness peculiar to our

insular character as a nation, which required correction before we could hope to give and receive all the

benefit we might, and to get rid of war and other disturbances of progress and happiness. The objects of this

International Association were the amelioration of the social position of women, and their moral and

intellectual elevation, through education; and the granting of the various rights which they claimed.

A LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF WOMEN AT WASHINGTON FROM JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. March, 1888. 18

"Mrs. Butler detailed the practical steps which have been taken in the direction of this education, both at

home and in Switzerland, Italy, Germany, Russia, France, and Constantinople; and in proceeding to consider

the relation of this educational movement to a more general and a very great social movement, including

innumerable interestsa movement which she trusted would result sooner or later in a purer and juster state

of societyshe said: 'I proposed at our meeting yesterday to resign the office of President of this Council as

soon as may be convenient to this Council to allow me to do so. It is not because I am not deeply interested in

the cause which this Council represents. I may say I am more deeply interested than ever, for I see in the

education of women one of the most necessary means of freeing poorer women from the awful slavery of

which I have seen so much lately; nor do I undervalue the higher culture of the individual as a means towards

The strangely providential guidance of all our schemes has lately been deeply impressed on my mind. We

started our educational schemes, I believe, in an honest and humble spirit, and they appeared to us the

readiest path towards aiding our fellowwomen, the distressed, the needy, and the wronged; and I believe our

labour has not been in vain. But in this, as in all our work on earth, we need further enlightening and

teaching. Looking back on my own experience of the past year, it appears to me as if God in His goodness

had said to me, "I approve your motive and your work: but you are trying to lay on the topmost stones while

there is an earthquake shaking your foundations. You must first descend to the lowest depths before you can

safely build up;" and then He showed us a plague spotHe showed us a deadly poison working through the

wholesale, systematic, and now legalized, degradation of women to the service of vice. He showed us the

ready elements for a speedy destruction of society, which the highest education itself would not be able to

stem. Not that our work in the cause of education has in any sense been a failure, far from it; but we need a

still larger infusion into these noble schemes for educating the masses, of the spirit of selfsacrifice, even of

martyrdom; we need to have our hearts more deeply penetrated with pity, and to be more resolutely bent on

making all our practical efforts tend to the revival of justice and of a pure and equal moral standard and equal

"While, therefore, I continue to regard the cause of Education as a most sacred cause, I come to the present

meeting with a saddened heart; and I only propose to relinquish the office I now hold, because I feel that God

has called me to a more painful one. All members have not the same office; all are not called to descend to

the depths of woe to clear out moral sewers, and to cast in their lot among wretched slave gangs, in order to

help the slaves to carry the weight of their chains, if not to break them away. This work, I think, is mine, but

there is other work not less holy, and which aims not less directly at a future emancipation; so while I feel all

the deeper gratitude to you, my fellowworkers in this Council, for the work you are doing in the cause of

humanity, I am obliged to confess to you that, for my own part, I fear I may not in future be able to give the

needful time to this work which it demands. I wish to leave it in abler and freer hands. It has my deepest

sympathy. It points to one of the most important of all the means by which we hope to undo the heavy

burdens and let the oppressed go free and inaugurate a purer and sounder National Life. To keep pace,

however, with this portion of the great work, one requires to have the head and heart free, and that cannot be

the case with one who is called to deal with the most miserable, to walk side by side, hand in hand, with the

outcast, the victim of our social sins, whose names one scarcely dares to name in refined society. I am full of

hope for the education cause, and for the antislavery cause, in which we are engaged. Nevertheless my very

soul grows faint before the facts of 1870, and though that faintness of soul may complete one's fitness to be a

fellowsufferer with the slave, it does not increase one's capacity for a work which requires intellectual

It is impossible, and would not be right, that I should trouble you with a report of the arduous work which our

Women's Abolitionist Society accomplished between 1869 and 1874. Suffice it to say, that we shook the

Government and aroused the whole nation; mountains were removed by the energy imparted by a gigantic

faith. In 1874 a "new departure" was inaugurated. The battle was carried across the channel to

Francewhere, under the first Napoleon, this abominable and impure tyranny had first been instituted in the

A LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF WOMEN AT WASHINGTON FROM JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. March, 1888. 19

end of the eighteenth centuryto Italy, to Switzerland, to Germany and to the Netherlands. It afterwards

spread to Spain, Holland, Denmark, Austria, Hungary; and Sweden and Norway. We now have friends in

Russia; but no association is yet found there. The first year's work was reported by our financial secretary,

"It was indeed a wise intuition which led the women of England to carry into its original strongholds the

campaign against the system of regulated vice, against whose encroachments we are contending in this

country. That move will benefit the agitation for Repeal in this country not only by the vast strengthening and

encouragement which the knowledge of the sympathy and cooperation of persons of all tongues and

countries has brought to so many of our workers here, but also because it has opened up an attack upon the

whole vicious system in its rear, and, drying up the sources and roots, so to speak, will cause the system to

fall more easily in this country; and not least because it has called forth in many countries the cooperation of

new Workers who may, confident of success and with united force and power, carry on the work against

"Not only have we seen, during the year of work just concluded, Refuges for the fallen established

throughout many cities of Europe, and men and women of many languages joining together to call for and

work for the abolition of regulated prostitution, and to aim through that at the abolition finally of prostitution

itself; but we have seen whole cities shaken as it were with the wind of a new revival, recognizing the crime

that they have committed before God in regulating and licensing the destruction of His image; we have seen

through the length and breadth of nations societies formed, actively working in a cause which had before laid

dormant; and we have seen the whole great nation of Italy, called as it were by the voice of God through his

poor and weak servants, recognizing that virtue and purity alone can be the basis of future greatness."

In a brief time we had won the public adhesion to our cause of many of the most distinguished persons on the

Continent, among whom we counted Joseph Mazzini and Garibaldi, in Italy; Jules Favre, Jules Simon, and

Victor Hugo, in France; the Count Agenor de Gasparin and the Countess de Gasparin, of Geneva; Baron de

Bunsen and Count Ungern Sternberg, in Germany; M. Emile de Laveleye, the well known writer and

economist of Belgium. But it is not so much to the adhesion of the great men that we hold, as to the active

concurrence of the thousands of women on the Continent of Europe, who have been awakened on this

question, and who have formed numerous and everincreasing Associations for working out our aims, more

Our Continental Secretary, Mr. Humbert, writing on this subject after fourteen years' experience, says:

"Happy are those nations in which women themselves have taken the initiative in this great movement, for in

such cases the movement will never die; whereas in countries where the work is left entirely to men, although

some reforms may be achieved, the movement is fitful and never possesses the same life."

This brings to me the most recent expansion of our work in the Colonies and in India. It is in allusion to this

new expansion that Mr. Humbert writes the letter just quoted. He continues, "How are we to proceed

successfully for the emancipation of women from the hateful thraldom imposed on them by the civilization of

conquering races, the thraldom of compulsory and stateregulated prostitution among Buddhists, Brahmins,

Mahometans, or Pagans, where the fate of women, in this world, at least, depends absolutely on the will of

man, their master? This is a difficult question to answer. We see occasionally a spark kindled amongst those

nations; but the light is short lived, and it continually requires to be rekindled." In spite of these difficulties,

however, we are pushing forward our work in Egypt and in the French Colonies of North Africa, as well as in

We believe that the question is coming rapidly to the front in India. The present mission of Mr. Dyer to India

is producing an awakening there that will be productive of very decided results from a Parliamentary and

Governmental point of view. We, as women, are more especially concerned with the awakening of the

A LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF WOMEN AT WASHINGTON FROM JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. March, 1888. 20

women of India on the subject of this imperiallyimposed degradation of their race, and to kindred questions

vitally concerning womanhood. On this side we are full of hope. It is affecting to see the petitions which are

now in the hands of some of our Members of Parliament this session. These petitions are from AngloIndian

and native womenand many are signed in Hindoo characters. The prayer of the petition is for relief from

this degrading law. We receive also privately very touching appeals from Indian ladies, and to these our

Association responds with eager sympathy. The following quotation from one of the replies, sent from the

Leeds branch of our Abolition Society, will show you the spirit with which the women of the world are

"Do let us assure you, dear Indian friends, that we have found that so long as our motives are pure, no evil

knowledge can hurt us. We have seen, on the contrary, that work of this kind undertaken in the spirit of

consecration (and in no other spirit can anyone endure to continue the work), may lead to a higher and purer

knowledge of life and the human heart. That many have found (as all must do sooner or later) that intellectual

force alone cannot guard against the horror of this evil; and have thus been driven to seek more spiritual

"Do be sure, dear friends, that whatever your enemies may say of you, in the invisible kingdom of

"And when you most greatly doubt success, when the power and wiles of the enemy seem indeed to be too

powerful for the feebleness of your hands, we feel sure you will find, as we have found, that from quarters

least expected, from the darkest parts of your sky, from the weakest parts of your army, help and light and

strength will come to you. Our victories do not often come to us in the manner or at the time that we expect,

"We cannot direct the whole order of the conduct of life; we can only fight in our own place, obeying the

nearest word that reaches us, knowing that no army can be beaten of which each individual soldier refuses to

Thus the women of the world are reaching out their hands to each other, and banding themselves together so

that when councils, rulers, and lords of science endeavour by decrees or by social tyranny to give a

continuance to the most degrading institution which has defiled the history of the human race, they will have

the power to say, "You shall not slay us or our sisters." They have struck a note for which the ages have been

waiting, and which even the Church itself in its organized ecclesiastical forms has never yet intoned.

There is a point on which I have sometimes thought (possibly without reason) that American women feel less

strongly than we do: I allude to the physical treatment forcibly imposed, the personal outrage on women,

which lies at the root of the practical working of the whole system of the state regulation of vice. You have

happily not had in America the practical experience which we in the old world have had of the degrading

effects of this outrage. It is the final and most complete expression of the foul idea of woman as a chattel, a

At our last International Congress, held at Lausanne, in September, 1887, some of our lessinstructed

followers had been occupying too much of our time in an attempt to defend, up to a certain point, the State's

action in tyrannizing over women. Thinking that the moment had come for a decided word on the part of

women themselves, I gave utterance to the thoughts which were in my mind; and in doing so I proclaimed in

the name of all women, that whatever subtlety of argument might weigh with certain doctors, legislators, etc.,

this was nothing to us, and we women solemnly declared again the principle of our own dignity, and our

determination never to sanction the enslavement of any woman by the outrage perpetrated under this system.

At the close of my few words Mdme. de Morsier, of Paris, rose, and with uplifted hand asked earnestly that

every woman present who agreed with, and reechoed from the depths of her heart the words of Mrs. Butler,

A LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF WOMEN AT WASHINGTON FROM JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. March, 1888. 21

should stand up. The large hall was crowded with women as well as men. The men continued sitting, but

every woman rose, and with right hand uplifted high, followed the action of Mdme. de Morsier and Mdme.

de Gingins, responding to the solemn words uttered by her"In the name of God, Amen!" There was a

significant silence of a few moments. Some of the gentlemen were surprised; most were deeply moved; and

to every woman present, I feel convinced, it was a ratification of our principles never to be forgotten. The

I mention this incident merely as an illustration of the spirit of our women in their jealous guardianship of the

sacredness of womenhood, even in the persons of the most degraded of their sisters. I myself believe this

As an inevitable and necessary accompaniment of the establishment of licensed houses of illfame under

Government patronage, all over the world there exists, as you well know, the most extensive slave traffic in

the interests of vice. This fact has become so fully acknowledged during the last few years as to have given

rise to that admirable and muchneeded Societythe "International Association of Friends of

Girls,"originating in Switzerland and now spreading all over and far beyond Europe. That Society has been

greatly strengthened in England since the Congress held in London in 1886; and this fact is brought home to

us by the reassuring sight at various railway stations and landing places of the warnings and friendly placards,

so diligently distributed and put up by the English branch of the Society, informing all girls and women of

Our Federation has collected carefully many facts and statistics concerning this worldwide slave traffic.

People in Europe speak with indignation of the traffic in negroes. It would be just as well if they would open

their eyes to what is going on much nearerthroughout the whole of Europeespecially in Germany and

Austria, where the exportation of white slaves is carried on on a large scale. A terrible picture is presented to

us of the enforced movement to and fro upon the face of the earth of these youthful victims of human cruelty.

"Numbers are embarked at Hamburgh, whose destination is South America, Bahia, and Rio de Janeiro. The

greater number are probably engaged for Monte Video and Buenos Ayres; others are sent by the Straits of

Magellan to Valparaiso. Other cargoes are sent to North America, some being forwarded to England others

direct. The competition which the traders meet with when they land sometimes constrains them to go further

ahead; they are found, therefore, descending the Mississippi with their cargoes to New Orleans and Texas.

Others are taken on to California. In the market of California they are sorted and thence taken to provision the

different localities on the coast as far as Panama. Others are sent from the New Orleans market to Cuba, the

Antilles, and Mexico. Others are taken from Bohemia, Germany, and Switzerland, across the Alps to Italy,

and thence further south to Alexandria and Suez, and eastward to Bombay, Calcutta, Singapore, Hong Kong,

and Shanghai. The Russian official houses of vice draw their slaves in a great measure from Eastern Prussia,

Pomerania, and Poland. The most important Russian station is Riga; it is there that the traders of St.

Petersburg and Moscow sort and get ready their cargoes for NijniNovgorod, and from this latter place

cargoes are sent on to the more distant towns of Siberia. At Tschita, a young German was found who had

You in America are happily free from the state regulation of vice; but, undoubtedly there is an extensive

traffic in white slaves in your midst, and a constant importation of poor foreigners to your shores, who are

destined to moral and spiritual destruction. I trust you will, from your Congress, put out strong hands for the

It may be that I am writing to some who have been accustomed to think of the poor outcasts of society as

beings different from othersin some way tainted from their birth, creatures apart without the tenderness

A LETTER TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONVENTION OF WOMEN AT WASHINGTON FROM JOSEPHINE E. BUTLER. March, 1888. 22

You may have imagined them to be for the most part reckless and willful sinners; or, if in the first instance

betrayed or forced into sin, now at least so utterly destroyed and corrupted as to have become something

unmentionable in polite society. Now, all who have had a practical acquaintance with the lives of poor and

tempted women, know how mistaken is such a judgment, how cruelly false in most cases. But granting for

the moment that women who have fallen from virtue have become so degraded as to be repulsive or

uninteresting to you, what have you to say concerning outraged children?And thousands of these are but

Who will dare to say that any child is determinedly, willfully wicked and degraded; that any child in the

world is further from God's kingdom than we grownup people are, however virtuous we may be? Nay, but

"of such is the Kingdom of Heaven." One who never errs has said it. We are not told that He selected an

exceptionally pure and holy child when He set a little child in the midst of the multitude, and said that,

Except we become as such a little child, we shall in no wise enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Verily, "their

angels do always behold the face of my Father, which is in Heaven," and woe be to that man, to that nation,

to those mothers of men and of nations, who, seeing that little child fallen among thieves, robbed, wounded,

murdered, dying, shall calmly pass by on the other side! A day is coming in which it will not avail any of us

to say, we knew it not; for now we know it. The means of knowing it, and the means of helping to redress this

wrong are within our reach, at our very hand. I cherish the hope and the belief that the time is at hand when

all women who are indeed mothers, and worthy of the name, will give up the chilling reserve, which seems

too much like acquiescence in evil, and will come forward to the rescue, not only for the sake of the innocent

This letter is sent forth with earnest prayer that while pardoning the imperfections of my poor appeal, God

would make use of it to fan the holy and purifying fire, which I feel sure is already kindled in your hearts.

When I kneel in my chamber to plead for the deliverance of these little ones for whom Christ died, I seem to

see the childish faces gathering in crowds around me, filling the space on every sidethe faces of the

slaughtered dead as well as of the living. These victims, voiceless and unable to plead their own cause, seem

to make their ceaseless, mute appeal from their scattered, unknown graves and from out those dark

But their weeping has been heard in heaven, and judgment is at hand. Of their destroyers it may be said,

"They murder the fatherless; yet they say the Lord shall not see it." Of you, O friends, let it be said, and let

the Saviour Himself speak the words, "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, ye have

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