In answer to our objections to these Acts, it is utter vanity and folly in any one to plead that they apply only to women who are prostitutes. Can it be supposed that there is any man in England so foolish as to think that the safeguards of English law exist for the sake of the guilty only? They exist for the sake of the innocent, who may be falsely accused, as well to protect them when accused, as to lessen the chances of unjust accusation. And can it be supposed that we are so blind as ever to be able to fancy that it is impossible that under this law an innocent woman may be accused? On the contrary, it is obvious that the question of a woman’s honour is one in which mistaken accusations are peculiarly likely to occur. Hence it has been that in Christian countries the sin of unchastity in a woman has ceased to be treated as legally criminal, on account, first, of the extreme facility of false accusation; and, second, of the impossibility of rebutting such accusation; and in more enlightened communities the injustice has been apparent of treating penally this offence in one sex only. Yet here we see a law which, regardless of these considerations, not only takes in hand the determination as to the question of a woman’s honour, but in the process of that determination deprives her of the only legal safeguard which it bestows in all other cases. We ought never to forget that the very fact of jury trial, which guards the person wrongfully accused, does itself also, more than any other thing, prevent such wrong accusations. Nor is there any accusation so likely to be multiplied by the absence of trial by jury as that against a woman’s honour. In presence of this enormity of these Acts, it is perhaps almost trivial to indicate a minor point in which they are unjust. It will be satisfactory to do so, however, in order to show the spirit of utter contempt for woman’s honour which this law evinces. The Acts require no witness against the woman except the policeman, who, though he must substantiate on oath his own belief that the woman is a prostitute, is not bound to produce on oath what the grounds of that belief are.[27] If the justice of peace is satisfied with this substantiation, the woman is condemned under the Act. The honour therefore of every woman is by this law intrusted to two men, the one the justice of the peace, and the other the policeman, who, let it be carefully observed, is expressly hired by Government for the one stated object of detecting unchaste women.