The deterioration of character amongst the women of the working classes is known to all employers of labour, to all who visit amongst the poor, to every housekeeper. The increasing difficulty of obtaining trustworthy domestic servants is now the common experience of civilized countries. In England, France, Germany, and the larger towns of America, it is a fact of widespread observation, and has become a source of serious difficulty in the management of family life. The deepest source of this evil lies in the deterioration of womanly character produced by the increasing spread of habits of licentiousness. The action of sex, though taking different directions, is as powerful in the young woman as in the young man; it needs as careful education, direction, and restraint. This important physiological truth, at present quite overlooked, must nevertheless be distinctly recognised. This strong mental instinct, if yielded to in a degrading way (as is so commonly the case in the poorer classes of society), becomes an absorbing influence. Pride and pleasure in work, the desire to excel, loyalty to duty, and the love of truth in its wide significance, are all subordinated, and gradually weakened, by the irresistible mastery of this new faculty. In all large towns the lax tone of companions, the difficulty in finding employment, the horrible cupidity of those who pander to corrupt social sentiment and ensnare the young--all these circumstances combined render vice much easier than virtue--a state of society in which vice must necessarily extend and virtue diminish. We thus find an immense mass of young women gradually corrupted from childhood, rendered coarse and reckless, the modesty of girlhood destroyed, the reserve of maidenhood changed to bold, often indecent, behaviour. No one accustomed to walk freely about our streets, to watch children at play, to observe the amusements and free gatherings of the poorer classes, can fail to see the signs of degraded sex. The testimony of home missionaries, of those experienced in Benevolent Societies and long engaged in various ways in helping women, as well as the Reports of Rescue Societies, all testify to the dangerous increase and lamentable results of unchastity amongst the female population.