s fellows.

Comstockery, as we know it, is apparently an organized effort to
regulate the morals of the people. If it were nothing more than this, it
would be absurd and negligible, because futile; for what we call morals
are only the observances which the conditions of life impose upon a
people; and an act depends, for its moral status, upon its relation to
those conditions. As, for example, horse-stealing in a closely settled
community, which has its railroads and other means of communication, is
a crime to be punished by a brief period of imprisonment; while in the
sparsely settled sections of a country, where the horse is an imperative
necessity of life, its theft becomes a hanging matter, whatever the
written law for that section of the country may be as to the punishment
of the crime. And men, brought up in law-abiding communities in the
deepest respect for the law, will, under the changed conditions of life,
not merely condone the infliction of a penalty in excess of that
provided by law, but will themselves assist, virtuously satisfied with
their conduct because the society of which they form a part has decided
that horse-stealing shall be so punished. On the other hand, there are
numerous laws on the statute books, still unrepealed and unenforceable
because the acts treated of are no longer held to be offences against
morality. In other words, the morals of a people can be regulated only
by themselves.

What Comstockery does is bad enough, but its real awfulness lies in the
fact that it seems to fairly enough represent us in our attitude toward
a certain class of ideas and things. It is the expression of our
essential immorality--using that word in its conventional sense--having
its roots deep down in pruriency, hypocrisy and ignorance. Like the
blush on the cheek of the courtesan, it deceives no one, but is none the
less a truthful expression, not of the thing it simulates, but of the
character of the simulator.

Comstockery was probably brought to this country by the first
Anglo-Saxon, whether pirate or minister of the gospel, who set foot on
this soil; certainly it was a finely blooming plant on the Mayflower,
and was soon blossoming here as never elsewhere in the world, giving out
such a fragrance that the peculiar odor of it has become a
characteristic of this land of liberty.

When the so-called Comstock laws were passed there was a real disease to
be treated: The symptoms of the disease were obscene