Accepting, therefore, one essential legislative principle so strongly emphasized by the Contagious Diseases Acts--viz., that the State has a right to interfere with sexual intercourse when its vicious action injures society--what we must strive for is an enlightenment of public opinion which will insist upon a _just_, practical law upon this subject. The contagious diseases legislation indicates that the time has arrived when the intervention of law is needed to place greater restraint upon the brutal lust which tramples on the plainest social obligations. A law wisely enforced, making the communication of venereal disease by man or woman a legal offence, would place a necessary check on brutal appetite. Such a law would not be the introduction of a new principle into legislation. The principle of considering sexual intercourse for the good of society has always been recognised, and must necessarily be developed with the growth of society. It was reaffirmed, but in an injurious manner, a few years ago. It is the just and moral application of this principle that must be insisted on, instead of an unjust, immoral, and tyrannical perversion of the principle. The necessary safeguards in the working of such a law, the special inquiry, the protection of innocence, the avoidance of public scandal, etc., must be sought for with care. But the people have a right to require that legislators shall seek for and find the right method of enforcing any law which is just in principle and necessary for the welfare of society. It is not only a duty, it is the greatest privilege of enlightened statesmen to embody the broad common-sense and righteous instinct of a Christian people in the institutions of a nation. A law which makes it a legal offence for an individual suffering from venereal disease to hold sexual intercourse with another person, and a ground for separation, is positively required in order to establish a true principle of legislation, a principle of just equality and responsibility which will educate the moral sense of the rising generation and protect the innocent. Any temporary inconveniences which might arise before the wisest methods of administering the law had been established by experience, would be as nothing compared with the elevating national influence of substituting a right method of dealing with the diseases of vice for the present unjust and evil method. The first direct means, therefore, for checking venereal disease is to make the spreading of this disease a legal offence.