For the victims of this traffic in flesh the Legislature had for long provided nothing but fine and imprisonment, methods which were as useless to deter the minority which was corrupt as they were powerless to save the majority which was unfortunate. The Liberal could adopt only one course, to attack the causes at their roots, to amend Statutes like the Divorce Act, which sanctioned vice in men, to protect young girls by raising the age of consent, and to impose penalties on those who exploited them, to improve the conditions of housing and labour, and to raise wages. The Government which was left in power by Palmerston, seeing prostitution only with male eyes, made a fatal error. They set themselves, not to make prostitution difficult for women, but to make it safe for men. The diseases produced by vice were seriously injuring the health of the Army and Navy. The Government did not attempt, as its successors have attempted, to reduce the practice of vice among their servants. They took the easier {257} course of recognizing and regulating what they thought they could not check. By the Act of 1866, amended by the Act of 1869, they compelled the unfortunate women in garrison towns to submit themselves periodically to medical examination. The healthy were discharged. The diseased were compulsorily detained in hospitals until they were cured, when they also were released to continue the practice of their trade. The soldiers and sailors were implicitly told that if they were careful to select one of these Government women they could be vicious with impunity. The climax of the system was reached in 1885, when the Commander-in-Chief in India instructed his commanding officers to see that plenty of good-looking girls were provided for their men, and that they had all proper facilities for practising their trade. Of the foul barbarity of this contrivance of the Legislature it is difficult to write with moderation, even at this distance of time. It is not suggested here that the majority of the men who were responsible were animated by vicious motives. It was only another example of unimaginative dullness legislating without responsibility. But the effect of deliberate wickedness could not have been worse. The wretched were confirmed in wretchedness. The degraded were thrust farther into the depths of degradation. Thousands of human beings of the subject class, originally guilty of nothing worse than poverty or a youthful lapse from principle, were placed by the State at the disposal of the governing class for the foulest purpose. It is a most vivid illustration of the rarity of complete Liberalism, that the Contagious Diseases Acts remained on the Statute Book for seventeen years, and that if they were in the first place smuggled through Parliament, they were afterwards defended by men of all parties alike.