The totality of our old legislation exhibits everywhere a considerable degree of severity against procurers and libertines; the decrees of our parliaments, and the proclamations of the provosts of Paris, often branded the former with disgrace, and condemned them to death; they had them even buried alive when they had cajoled women by flatteries or presents. A bill of the 15th century gives the cost of a dozen _new brooms_ used at the execution of some procuresses, who had their ears cropt, were put in the pillory, whipped, and afterwards burnt. At other times the brothel-keeper was led through the town, mounted on an ass, with her face to the animal’s tail; afterwards the executioner branded her with a hot-iron and expelled her from the locality. In the 18th century several examples of this kind of punishment occur, and it was inflicted in Paris as recently as A.D. 1756. Every one conspired to punish the mother infamous enough to procure her daughter’s prostitution; the spectators beat her with rods, and the executioner cut off her nose. The agents of profligacy were, in like manner, punished if they lent clothes or money to a woman of ill fame, with the design of encouraging her profligacy; the things supplied could not be legally re-demanded, and if an attempt were made to regain them by force from the woman to whom they had been lent, or to take others in way of compensation, they were prosecuted as thieves. How far were our ancestors from this modern progress, which gives us, in the case of procuresses of infamy, _ladies of the house_ sufficiently respected and sufficiently respectable to find husbands, and legionaries for sons-in-law! Oh, honour! Oh, my country! These vile creatures, the objects of the just severity of laws, were marked out for public contempt by infamous designations; we may judge of that by the vehement indignation of old authors against this disgusting traffic, which was formerly looked upon, in France, and with so much reason, as the most horrible of crimes. “What else do the procurers, if not restore, in their entirety, all the detestable slaveries abolished by law—to effect better than before the sale of men?” “As for panders and procuresses,” exclaims another writer, “they are quite insufferable as enemies to respectability, betrayers of matronly and maidenly modesty, assassins of holy human society, traitors to the lawful succession of true heirs, firebrands of hell, and faithful interpreters of the filthy mind.”