such frank acknowledgement of the existence of slavery, were not the
Queen's proclamation against slavery, and the many other enactments of
the same sort, enforced? Listen, and we will tell why. These officials
believed _vice was necessary_, and as there was no class of "fallen
women," in our understanding of the term, the Oriental prostitute
being a literal slave, then _slavery was necessary_ when it ministered
to the vices of men. Hence the Government-registered brothels were
filled with women slaves. As to the unregistered brothels, the
"protected woman" protected that, and also the nursery of purchased
and stolen children being brought up and trained for the slave market,
excepting those children which, as we have seen, were being trained in
the registered houses. If an officer attempted to enter the house of
a "protected woman," he was told: "This is not a brothel. This is the
private family residence of Mr. So and So," mentioning the name of
some foreigner. Thus the foreigners who kept Chinese mistresses
furnished, in effect, that protection to slavery that led the Chinese
to go forward so boldly in their business of buying and kidnaping
children. Even when women were brought into court for keeping
unregistered brothels, and although they were keeping them, yet if
they could show that they were "protected women," they had a fair show
of being acquitted.

Legislative enactments directed to the object of making the practice
of vice healthy for men are called, in popular language, "Contagious
Diseases Acts," because that was the first name given them. But of
late years all such laws have met with such bitter opposition, that,
like an old criminal, the measures seek to hide themselves under all
sorts of _aliases_. Mrs. Josephine Butler describes such legislation
in general in the following simple, lucid manner: