Address delivered in Craigie Hall, Edinburgh, February 24th, 1871 / by Josephine E. Butler.

  • Butler, Josephine Elizabeth Grey, 1828-1906.
Date:
1871
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Address delivered in Craigie Hall, Edinburgh, February 24th, 1871 / by Josephine E. Butler. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    all. I will not dwell on other points, as for instance the enforced self-crimination of the women, the dispensing, often, with the formality even of a Justice, but will pass on. My recent inquiries on these matters have made me very sorrowful, as a lover of my country, and not only of woman- kind. There are other Acts of Parliament now in force, and several others I fear about to be passed, the tendency of which is in every case more or less .unconstitutional, and more or less demoralising, using these words in a general sense. This type of legislation seems to me to flow from one source. I scarcely know how to designate that source. It is clumsy and despotic; and, though I have no doubt well- intentioned, it tends to the steady increase of the criminal class, by the rapid creation of new crimes, new offences, followed by new pains and penalties. It tends to bring us back to the old pantheistic State worship, to the substitution of the will of the State for individual ..conscience, and to that cruellest of all tyrannies which De Tocqueville shadows forth in his pages on the despotism of the future, the despotism which may exist with democratic institutions. This species of legislation assumes the right to coerce human beings to any extent which may seem to minister to a given material end, or to be temporarily expedient It is stringent, punitive, and arbitrary. It is unchristian in the sense that it practically denies the possibility of moral renova- tion, and cuts off the means of rising from the stage of criminality to that of a reinstated membership of society. It deals out more and more punishment, more and more penalties, more and more espionage. It, m fact, legislates more and more for persons as if they were « physical facts, and not « moral agents. It defies the instinct of freedom in man, and ignores the power of re- newal m human character. The broad principles of our Con- stitution are so glorious in their acknowledgment of the dignitv and Worth of human beings, that wherever this new legislation takes root, it is obliged to do so outside of the Constitution so ITnt' VI rireCt rkti°n °f itS princiPles' To the <*» of laws of which I speak belongs the Habitual Criminals Bill which even now has begun to bring forth vicious fruit, to fill our streets with spies, and to drive men to despair