But more than this. Encouraged by her act, the Government claimed the women of England as its supporters, defied moral sentiment, and, on the crest of the wave of this unhappy dissension, carried the re-enactment of the infamous C. D. Acts among our sisters in India. It will take long and weary years of uphill work to undo the mischief that her ill-advised and hasty action wrought. Meantime, how many Indian women will have succumbed to a shameful life and gone down to a dishonoured grave? The weakest point of Lady Henry's letter is the erroneous assumption on which it is based: that her proposals themselves were moral, and that if the Government had instituted reforms they might have successfully co-existed with regulation. But how can regulation under any circumstances be a remedy? The very terms are self-contradictory. What is morally wrong can never be experimentally right, and this proposition neither casuistry nor expediency can set aside. The only remedy is obedience to the law of God; and if material aids be needed, let them be found in some active measures for the mental, moral, and spiritual improvement of our soldiers in their leisure hours. This is where reform is needed. * * * * * The foregoing Letter, together with the article from _The Christian_, were printed in full in _The Shield_ (the official organ of the British Committee of the Federation for the Abolition of the State Regulation of Vice) of March, 1898, with the following NOTE BY THE EDITOR. "We are glad to see that Lady Henry Somerset has now withdrawn from the proposals for the Regulation of Vice with which her name has become connected. At the same time we regret that she still appears to think that her scheme could possibly have done good if side by side with it had been some moralizing agency. Our position is and has uniformly been that Regulation is essentially under all circumstances a demoralizing agency, and must be so from the very nature of the case; and that the provision of women certified fit for immoral purposes is necessarily disastrous whatever be the concomitants of such a proposition." * * * * * Transcriber's Notes The old-fashioned English names of towns and cities in South Asia that are used in the text have been retained. Variations in the spelling of other words are unchanged unless noted in the following. * Corrections to the Original Text The following misprints and other errors have been corrected: Page 23 - the word "prostitutues" changed to "prostitutes" ("a system of compulsory examination of prostitutes"). Page 42 - the text "to be longer" changed to "to be any longer" ("when too old to be any longer 'sufficiently attractive' to the soldier"). Page 101 - the word "analagous" changed to "analogous" ("are closely analogous to the conditions"). * Other Changes