“The _deserter_, not the seducer, should be branded with the same kind and degree of reprobation with which society now visits the coward and the cheat. The man who submits to insult rather than fight; the gambler who packs the cards, or loads the dice, or refuses to pay his debts of honour, is hunted from among even his unscrupulous associates as a stained and tarnished character. _Let the same measure of retributive justice be dealt to the seducer who deserts the woman who has trusted him_, _and allows her to come upon the town_. We say the deserter—not the seducer; for there is as wide a distinction between them as there is between the gamester and the sharper. Mere seduction will never be visited with extreme severity among men of the world, however correct and refined may be their general tone of morals; for they will always make large allowances on the score of youthful passions, favouring circumstances, and excited feeling. Moreover, they well know that there is a wide distinction—that there are all degrees of distinction—between a man who commits a fault of this kind, under the influence of warm affections and a fiery temperament, and the cold-hearted, systematic assailer of female virtue, whom all reprobate and shun. It is universally felt that you cannot, with any justice, class these men in the same category, nor mete out to them the same measure of condemnation. But the man who, when his caprice is satisfied, casts off his victim as a worn-out garment or a damaged toy; who allows the woman who trusted his protestations to sink from the position of his companion to the loathsome life of prostitution, because his seduction and desertion has left no other course open to her; who is not ready to make any sacrifice of place, of fortune, of reputation even, in order to save one whom he has once loved from such an abyss of wretched infamy—must surely be more stained, soiled, and hardened in soul, more utterly unfitted for the company or sympathy of gentlemen or men of honour, than any coward, any gambler, any cheat!”