ely wished the good of the girls, but they
said they chose a life of prostitution, and to that life they were
returned.

We do not pretend to understand as well as that judge the laws that
were available, on which he rendered his decision, but this we do say:
If California has not a law that will not permit the introduction
of slavery into the state, even though Chinese women _consent_ to
slavery, then it needs such a law at once. _Slavery is too formidable
an evil for free Americans to allow its existence on the consent of
enslaved Chinese women._ Age of consent legislation, as applied to the
question of social vice, is one thing, and consent as applied to the
question of slavery, quite another thing. Sir John Smale, in the
Supreme Court of Hong Kong, quoting from Sir R. Phillimore on
International law (vol. I, p. 316), declared that it was not possible
for a human being legally to "become a slave _even by his own
consent_." Had the matter of consent or non-consent of slaves been
consulted as to negro slavery, we have no reason for believing that
the negro would ever have had his freedom. Though prostitution is
entangled with the conditions of servitude, under which Chinese women
and girls groan in California, yet only about half the slaves are as
yet prostitutes, and slavery looms up so large against the western
sky, as compared with the mere consent or wish of a creature brought
up from babyhood in familiarity with vice, that to consult the option
of such an one in determining the existence or non-existence of
_slavery_ in America, is a thing that ought not to be tolerated for a
moment.

We have shown how every Chinese girl who has escaped from her
servitude to the city of refuge,--the mission home,--is received and
welcomed. How the rescued and rescuer run the race for dear life, and
the pursuers are obliged to turn back at the door. But what a state
of things in this country which we call free! Should not the entire
country be one great city of refuge? Do we not pretend that it is such
to all who are oppressed? Why should not the pursuer be turned back at
the Golden Gate, rather than at the door of an exceptional home in
San Francisco? We are fond of saying that under the stars and stripes
slavery cannot exist. We must make it good, or acknowledge, in dust
and ashes of repentance, that we are hypocrites. Idle words will not
do in place of deeds; we must make good our profession at any cost.
Everyone of these Chi