But I do not advocate letting disease and vice alone. There is a right way as well as a wrong way of dealing with venereal disease. I consider that legislation is needed on this subject. It is unwise to propose to do nothing because legislation has unhappily done wrong. It is out of the question to suppose that in this age, when we justly boast of the progress of hygiene or preventive medicine, so great an evil as the unchecked spread of venereal disease should be allowed to continue. It was the necessity of providing some check to the spread of disease which operated a few years ago, when the unjust and immoral Contagious Diseases Acts were so unhappily introduced into England by those who certainly could not have realized their injustice and immorality. All legislation upon the diseases of vice which can be durable--_i.e._, which will approve itself to the conscience of a Christian people--must be based upon two fundamental principles--the principles, viz., of equal justice and respect for individual rights. These principles are both overturned in the Contagious Diseases Acts--Acts which are, therefore, sure to be abolished in a country which, however many blunders it makes, is equally distinguished for its love of justice and its love of liberty. Respect for individual rights will not allow compulsory medical examination and treatment. The right of an adult over his or her own body is a natural fundamental right. We should uproot our whole national life, and destroy the characteristics of the Anglo-Saxon race, if we gave up this natural right of sovereignty over our own bodies. Society, however, has undoubtedly the right to prevent any individual from injuring his neighbour. Interference to prevent such injury is just. The same sacredness which attaches to individual right over one’s own person exists for one’s neighbour over his or her own person. Therefore, no individual suffering from venereal disease has a right to hold sexual intercourse with any other person. In doing so he goes outside his individual right and injures his neighbour. The wise principle on which legislation should act in dealing with venereal disease is therefore perfectly clear. Society has a right to stop any person who is spreading venereal disease; but it has no right to compel such a person to submit to medical treatment. It is of vital importance to recognise the broad distinction between these two fundamental points--viz., the just protection which society must exercise over its members, and the inherent right of self-possession _in_ each of its members.