I have thought it right to make this distinction clear because of our adversaries, who, when we speak of the punishment under these Acts inflicted on women, affect to suppose that we refer only to the punishment inflicted on a prostitute for the offence of not obeying the Government conditions; again here assuming, as they invariably do, that no one but such a person is ever dealt with by this law; so that I must again emphatically call the attention of the reader to the fact, that the first proceeding under the Act is that of determining, by the arbitrary tribunal which I have before discussed, the fact as to whether the woman be a prostitute or not. And if the decision of this tribunal be, as we declare it is and must be, very frequently erroneous, it is a virtuous woman, and not a prostitute, who is involved in all the subsequent proceedings; and since these proceedings are entered upon on account of her resistance to the subsequent action of the law, the chance of gross injustice is all the greater, since it certainly would be the virtuous woman, or one who had some modesty left, rather than the vicious one, who would resist the proceedings. How then can that be called a minor offence, which involves by no means a minor penalty? How can that be called a case for the law’s celerity, which involves a repeated, and it may be a life-long, imprisonment?[45] How can that be called a minor case which involves not only repeated imprisonment, but which is based on an accusation of the most subtle, cruel, and injurious kind, and which, even though disproved, carries with it its own penalty, whether in the form of loss of character (which character is often the sole capital of a poor woman), or violation of the person of that outrageous kind which I have before said it is impossible to mention?—a violation which is in fact such a proceeding as is forbidden in the clause of Magna Charta as above quoted, “and neither will we destroy any one except by the judgment of his peers.” How can that be regarded as a minor offence which involves a punishment which is irretrievable, and which is the only irretrievable punishment now inflicted in this country except that of death? It is in vain for supporters of the Acts to deny that the violation of the person above alluded to is punishment of the grossest and most horrible kind for every creature calling herself a woman: but should anybody urge that that operation of the Act upon the person of a proved prostitute is neither horrible nor irretrievable, once more let him remember that these Acts deal with women generally, not with prostitutes exclusively, and that the first process under the Acts is the arbitrary determination as to the character of the woman suspected, which determination amounts in fact to an arbitrary selection of such women as the policeman and magistrate deem proper to bring under the Acts.