In the first place, the summary character of these Acts in question does not exist for the sake of the accused, as may be best shown by a provision under them called the “voluntary submission,” by means of which a woman is made to criminate herself; whereas, in all other cases, care is taken in any examination of an accused person to give him every advantage, and not to entangle him; and he is especially advised by the person who examines him, to say or sign nothing to criminate himself. The woman, on the contrary, is subjected to no examination, but is simply requested to criminate herself; and the War Office and Admiralty order that if she do not immediately criminate herself, she is to be threatened with penal consequences for her refusal.[42] In the second case, the proceedings under these Acts are not for the sake of expediting the matter, and of reinstating the accused in society, because this Act condemns her to be, or sign herself, a bondwoman for a given period not exceeding a year.[43] Therefore the motives for making the proceedings under this Act summary cannot be said to exist. With respect to the voluntary submission, the illegal threat of the Admiralty and War Office (already quoted in the Note, p. 58), backed up by police intimidation, has induced many women, friendless and ignorant of the laws, to sign that submission in preference to the alternative of going before a magistrate. To this they have been induced by the hope that their registration may thus be kept a secret, and by ignorance of the real nature of the personal outrage to which they submit themselves, the real nature of which it is impossible for any one to gather from the form of the voluntary submission, or, indeed, from anything in the Acts.[44] But if it be alleged, as an inference from this, that the ordeal incurred is not so detestable a thing to a woman as we have represented it to be, if they choose rather to submit to it voluntarily than to have their case tried openly before a magistrate, choosing a certainty of subjection to this ordeal rather than publicity, with the chance of escape; and if on that account it be alleged in objection to our argument, that the publicity of open jury trial would be still more painful for these women to encounter than the publicity of proceedings before a single magistrate, we would reply that, though the alternative just mentioned is offered by the Act, it is by no means the alternative which has been presented to the minds of the women, to whom the lie circulated by the authority of the Admiralty and War Office has distinctly declared that the going before a magistrate is only a public method of the same submission; and to whose mind that going before the magistrate is presented, not as a trial, but as a proceeding involving direct penal consequences. If it be represented to her that it is penal to refuse to sign the voluntary submission, how can she refuse? Yet even