stem everywhere, and are on the
watch to introduce it wherever we are off our guard. In almost
all British colonies they are very busy. At the Cape of Good
Hope, where the Cape parliament had repealed the law, the
governor, Sir Bartle Frere, has been induced by certain
specialists and immoral men, to reintroduce it. But since he
could not count on the parliament at Cape Town for doing this, he
has reintroduced the miserable system by means of a proclamation
or edict, without the sanction and probably, to a great extent,
without the knowledge of parliament. The same game is being
played in other colonies. These facts seem to point to a more
decided and bitter struggle on the question than we have yet
seen. An energetic member of our executive committee, M. Pierson
of Zetten, in Holland, says:

I look upon legalized prostitution as the system in which
the immorality of our age is crystalized, and that in
attacking it we attack in reality the great enemies which
are hiding themselves behind its ramparts. But if we do not
soon overthrow these ramparts we must not think our work is
fruitless. A great work is already achieved; sin is once
more called sin instead of necessary evil, and the true
standard of morality--equal for men and women, for rich and
poor--is once more raised in the face of all the nations.

This legalization of vice which recognized the "necessity" of
impurity for man and the institution of slavery for woman, is the
most open denial which modern times have seen of the principle of
the sacredness of the individual human being. It is the
embodiment of socialism in its worst form. An English high-class
journal confessed this, when it dared to demand that women who
are unchaste shall henceforth be dealt with "not as human beings,
but as foul sewers," or some such "material nuisance" without
souls, without rights and without responsibilities. When the
leaders of public opinion in a country have arrived at such a
point of combined depotism as to recommend such a manner of
dealing with human beings, there is no crime which that country
may not legalize. Were it possible to secure the absolute
physical health of a whole province, or an entire continent by
the destruction of one, only on