not sentimentally, but in the strictest legal sense. Slavery means that condition in which an individual is not master of his own person, and the condition of slavery is defined in Magna Charta by the omission of all slaves from the rights which that charter grants to every one else. There could be no more complete, galling, and oppressive deprivation of freedom than this which takes place under these Acts. Nor is this compulsory attendance and detention wherever and whenever a surgeon may please the only loss of freedom to which the woman is subject, and which strictly comes under the meaning of the words of Magna Charta, “We will imprison no one;” but she is liable further by the clauses of the Act already quoted in the note to be detained in an hospital for a period so long as nine months, which is distinctly defined under the Acts (see clause 26) as an imprisonment, and is such that she may (see clause 28, quoted below), if she quits it without being discharged by the surgeon, be “taken into custody, without warrant, by any constable.” These are obvious contraventions of the chapter of Magna Charta referred to, and no argument is required to establish that they are such. It is not however out of place to show here an additional consequence which follows directly on a woman’s being registered as a “public woman,” and which is by no means the least of the evils which accrue to her under this Act. Indeed, if we consider it rightly, it is virtually that which comprehends all the rest. According to Magna Charta it is not only a subject’s person and liberty which shall be untouched, except after trial by jury, but also his property. Now the honour of a poor woman is often her only capital; it is in fact that part of her property the loss of which is ruin to her; the action of this law therefore, by registering a woman as infamous, deprives her of that character the possession of which is, in almost every case, her only hope of getting a living in an honest situation, and the loss of which, whether it be lost rightly or wrongly, is ruinous to her whole future life. Now here let me once more quote the clause of Magna Charta, and let the reader place for himself these abominable Acts in the full light which is flashed upon them by that sun which enlightens English liberty:— “No freeman shall be taken, or imprisoned, or disseised, or outlawed, or banished, or anyways destroyed, nor will we pass upon him, nor will we send upon him, unless by the lawful judgment of his peers, or by the law of the land. We will sell to no man, we will not deny to any man either justice or right.”