Public morals / [James Marchant, editor].

Date:
[between 1900 and 1910]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Public morals / [James Marchant, editor]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    248/256 (page 248)
    some of the leisure and enjoyment and luxury they see everywhere around them. With these two classes everywhere present, and the endless temptations afforded by the amusements of all great cities where the two meet together, and the resulting immorality is as necessary a result (average human nature being what it is) as would be an explosion if an open bonfire were kept constantly burning in every powder magazine. Every step of the process is so thoroughly well known that I need not refer to them here; but it seems to me that the supposition of a remedy in any amount of moral or philosophical or religious teaching, while these conditions continue to exist, is as entirely futile as would be the most rigid rules prohibiting smoking or the use of fire in the powder magazines while the bonfires were kept continually burning. My remedy goes to the root of this and most other forms of immorality. We know that idle- ness and wealth are in every way ruinous to the young, but we cry out against all proposals to abolish both. We know that poverty and hard work and joyless lives render it almost impossible for young girls to resist the tempta- tions offered them by the idle and wealthy young (and old) men; yet, though we profess to prize the refinement and purity of womanhood, we cry out equally against all reformers who propose to remove all alike from the pressure of conditions which render purity and refinement almost impossible. I have shown how both these social poisons can be abolished by adopting and logically pursuing the great principle of Equality of