Personal reminiscences of a great crusade / by Josephine E. Butler.

  • Butler, Josephine Elizabeth Grey, 1828-1906.
Date:
1898
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Personal reminiscences of a great crusade / by Josephine E. Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    after verbal amendment in 18G8, was still further extended by the Act of 18G9. This last Act was not allowed much peace, for it was in the autumn of the same year that the opposition arose ; in fact, a powerful protest had been raised shortly before the passing of this complete Act. Mrs. Harriet Martineau, with all the shrewdness and enlighten- ment of a true woman and an able politician, had seen the tendency of a certain busy medical and military clique in this direction. The then editor of the Daily Neivs, who was favourable to our views, asked Mrs. Martineau to write a series of letters in his paper. This she did, and her letters are extremely weighty, and wonderful to read at this day, when we have an immense accumulation of evidence to support her and our views, which she, of course, did not possess. Her advice on this matter concerning our army is admirable. Speaking of our poor soldiers, she says :—“ But while favouring the element of brutality in him (the soldier), we had not need go further and assume in practice that his animalism is a necessity which must be provided for. This is the fatal step which it is now hoped that the English Parliament and the English people may be induced to take. If the soldier is more immoral than his contemporaries of the working class, it must be because the standard of morality is lower in the army than out of it. Shall we then raise it to what we clearly see it might be, or degrade it further by a practical avowal that vice is in the soldier’s case' a necessity to be provided for, like his need of food and clothing ? This admission of the necessity of vice is the point on which the whole argument turns, and on which irretrievable conse- quences depend. Once admitted, the necessity of a long series of fearful evils follows of course. There can be no resistance to seduction, procuration, disease, regulation, ichen once the original necessity is granted. Further, the ad- mission involves civil as well as military society, and starts them together on the road which leads down to what moralists of all ages and nations have called the lowest hell. . . . It is a national disgrace that our people should have