The power of the human race to place itself under any restrictions which its welfare requires, has already been shown in the control which society exercises over the intense craving of hunger. Strong as the faculty of sex is, its abnegation does not destroy the individual as does starvation from lack of food. This instinct, therefore, cannot be considered more imperative than that of hunger; it must be as susceptible of restraint. Indeed, the relations of sex have already been placed under a certain amount of restriction by both law and custom, only these restrictions are not nearly of such severity or universal application as those which govern the instinct of hunger, showing that the human race, in their present stage of development, have not felt that it was such a pressing question. Society has not hitherto recognised such restraint as essential to its own existence and welfare. This conviction, however, is now awakened, and when once established, it will be found that the dominion of law is as powerful in one direction as in the other. Every great question of society is a necessary subject of legislation. The necessity of protecting property and the ability to do so, even against the terrible power of slow starvation, is shown by every civilized nation. This experience conclusively proves that chastity also may be protected by legislation, as soon as the growing common-sense of a community awakes to the fact that it also is a property--the most valuable property that a great nation can possess--and that licentiousness is a growing evil that may be checked by legislation. The true principle to be held to, in legislating for the evils that afflict society, cannot be too often insisted on. In legislating for any evil, it is necessary to seek out the deepest source of the evil, and check that source. Attention must not be limited to the effects of the evil. This is eminently true of all legislation which deals with the evils caused by licentiousness--a branch of legislation which, more than any other, has a direct and powerful bearing upon the welfare of the family.