In the expectation of having this proved to us in numerous pamphlets to the absolute satisfaction of the writers of the same, I cannot avoid this opportunity of investigating a little more closely the so-called moral arguments brought forward in favour of the Acts. In doing so I do not for a moment intend to return to that unprofitable dispute which they prolong regarding certain reclamations which they claim of a percentage of their patients in hospital. But I would call attention to the following fact, that our opponents always, and up to the present moment, in speaking of the “moral view,” include in that expression only that wretchedly limited portion of the question which relates to the annual exodus from this degrading trade of a certain number of public women, an exodus which they who are acquainted with the circumstances of the lives of such women before the Acts ever came into existence, know to have been always going on to a very much greater extent than the upholders of these Acts take cognisance of. Whereas this has, without exception, been the limit of our opponents’ view of the extent of the moral question involved, our view of that question has extended far beyond the moral influence of this legislation on the immediate victims of it, and has embraced its influence on the country at large, and that not only considered in its character as a direct encouragement to license, through the protection offered, but also in its character as a warping and blinding influence on the judgments and consciences of men of all classes who may themselves not be guilty of any personal impurity. It is a most inadequate and narrow view of the morality of which we speak as undermined by the Acts, which is exclusively confined to sexual morality. Injustice is immoral; oppression is immoral; the sacrifice of the interests of the weaker to the stronger is immoral; and all these immoralities embodied in these iniquitous Acts, and continually contemplated, as they must be, by all that portion of the nation who have no direct connection with the working of them, are a demoralizing influence of the most deadly character. I cannot too much insist upon the weight which we who oppose these Acts attach to the statement which we have so frequently made, that they are calculated to transfer the essential element of guilt from the vice to the infringement of this law. Under the action of this law we maintain that gradually society at large comes to regard as evil and good, not vice and virtue absolutely, but, vice not regulated by this law, and vice regulated by this law. Men’s talk, inferences, actions come to be all based upon a false distinction, the distinction between regulated and unregulated vice, and the true distinction between vice and virtue is lost sight of.