I cannot sufficiently warn the people of England of the need of a jealous watchfulness over the actions of these law-making doctors. The Contagious Diseases Act of 1869 was smuggled through the House of Commons in three days; there is now another Bill emanating from the same source which will probably shortly come also before the House, some of the provisions of which (already alluded to in a note) may be found to be of a character as oppressive though not so immoral as those which I have been describing. It behoves the people of England, therefore, narrowly to watch, lest, through the collusion of doctors and aristocratic law-makers, the liberties of the free citizens of England should be even further and more grievously infringed than they already have been. I have hitherto bestowed upon our Constitution unmitigated praise; but in the laws of England there is one great and unique defect. We can scarcely open the works of our great lawyers of past times without observing, that, even among those who most eulogize our system of laws, there is an uneasy consciousness of something somewhere wrong. At Liverpool, in the spring of 1870, a case was tried of a man of thirty years of age who had assaulted criminally a child of fourteen years, who had been an under-servant in his house. The defence set up was _consent_. “Mr. Justice Willes, in passing sentence, said he hoped that, in cases where girls between twelve and fourteen years of age were assaulted or seduced, the question as to their consent would attract public attention, and that largely; he had had to try a great many cases of this kind, especially where girls were servants, and where their masters, instead of protecting the poor children under their charge, had corrupted them; he hoped that what the Bishop of Winchester had so often attempted, though unsuccessfully,—to have the law which extended only to twelve years of age extended to girls of fourteen,—would yet be accomplished, and that outrages upon these little ones would be made an offence against law without any question of consent. He felt very deeply on this subject, and his experience showed him the necessity of protection for girls of tender years; it was quite absurd to suppose that a law which applied to girls of twelve should not apply to girls of fourteen, as girls were mere children up to fully the age of fourteen.”[90] The laws of most other countries make the seduction of any woman under twenty-one a misdemeanour; but our laws, to the disgrace of Englishmen, allow the seduction of any child over twelve. If a villain can persuade the dispensers of the law that he can show that there was consent on the part of the child whom he ruined, he is free. [Acting upon this rule, these Acts we are opposing take children of twelve, and even younger, outrage them, bind them over to return again and again to be outraged, and turn them back upon the streets.] An eye-witness of the trial alluded to remarked that pity and anger strove