single persons, and that male persons have no part whatever in the offence. The attempt to define a prostitute is as difficult as it is, in the long gradation of character among men, from the most virtuous to the most vicious, to fix on that point at which a man may be stamped as an immoral character. Nevertheless, if the purification of society were the object of these laws, instead of the protection of one sex against the other, it would be possible, for legal purposes, to define prostitution, although the definition might be arbitrary. But for the purposes of this law, which does not aim at the purification of society, but only at the protection of one sex against the other, it is absolutely necessary that definitions should be avoided, and that the wholesale treatment of the weaker sex should be carried on in a maze of indefiniteness and arbitrary selection. But without inquiry further into the causes which operate to bring about this result, it is evident that in the absence of any unanimity of opinion in the public mind as to what constitutes a prostitute, and in presence of the difficulty of drawing the line which public opinion admits, these Acts were bound to supply the definition. In the long line of women, extending from the most virtuous to the most vicious, there are two points at which the Acts might, if they pleased, have defined prostitution. Yet they adopt neither of these definitions. In the first place, they might have said that every woman is to be called a prostitute under these Acts who voluntarily and by some avowed method assumes the name; or secondly, that every woman who is found associating, under any circumstances, with a man, and who cannot produce a certificate of her marriage with him, is to be called a prostitute under the Acts. Public opinion would not sanction the latter definition. They did not adopt the former definition because it would not have been sufficiently inclusive for the purposes of the Act. What they have really done is to leave the word undefined, and professing to adopt something like the former definition, thus soothing the alarms of justly-minded persons, they practically adopt the latter definition, with such arbitrary omissions as shall, in various places and at various times, seem good to the policeman of the district and the justice of peace of the district.[67]