Ancient religions and systems of legislation punished misdemeanors and crimes against the purity of women severely (says M. Legouvé in his fourth chapter). Our code, profoundly immoral, does not punish seduction, and punishes corruption only derisively, and violation insufficiently. To declare void the promise of marriage is fearful immorality; to permit no investigation of paternity and to admit that of maternity, is as cruel as it is immoral. If the solicitude of the legislator for property be compared with his solicitude for purity, we shall soon see how little the law cares for the latter. "The law recognizes as criminal only a single kind of robbery of honor, _violation_, but it defines, pursues and punishes two kinds of robbery of money, _larceny_ and _fraud_; there are thieves of coin, there are no sharpers in chastity." When a man has seduced a girl fifteen years old under promise of marriage, he has "a right to come before a magistrate and say: This is my signature, it is true; but I refuse to acknowledge it; a debt of love is void in law." The indignant author exclaims, further on: "Thus, therefore, on every side, in practice and in theory, in the world and in the law, for the rich as for the poor, we see abandonment of public purity, and a loose rein to all ungoverned or depraved desires.... Manufacturers seduce their workwomen, foremen of workshops discharge young girls who will not yield to them, masters corrupt their servant maids. Of 5083 lost women, enumerated by the grave Parent-Duchâtelet at Paris in 1830, 285 were servants, seduced by their masters, and discarded. Clerks, merchants, officers, students deprave poor country girls and bring them to Paris, where they abandon them, and prostitution gathers them up.... At Rheims, at Lille, in all the great centres of industry, are found organized companies for the recruital of the houses of debauchery of Paris." With the indignation of an upright man, M. Legouvé adds: "Punish the guilty woman if you will, but punish also the man! She is already punished; punished by abandonment, punished by dishonor, punished by remorse, punished by nine months of suffering, punished by the burden of rearing a child: let him then be smitten in turn; or else, it is not public decency that you are protecting, as you say, it is masculine sovereignty, in its vilest form: seigniorial right! "Impunity assured to men doubles the number of illegitimate children. Impunity fosters libertinism; libertinism enervates the race, wastes fortunes and blights offspring. Impunity fosters prostitution; prostitution destroys the public health, and makes a profession of idleness and license. Impunity, in short, surrenders half the human race as a prey to the vices of the other half: behold its condemnation in a single word."