provision of lust.

"Besides being grossly unjust, as between men and women, this law
is a piece of class legislation of an extreme kind. The position
and wealth of men of the upper classes place the women belonging
to them above any chance of being accused of prostitution. Ladies
who ride in carriages through the street at night are in no danger
of being molested. But what about working women? what about the
daughters, sisters and wives of working men, out, it may be, on
an errand of mercy at night? and what, most of all, of that girl
whose father, mother, friends are dead or far away, who is
struggling hard, in a hard world, to live uprightly and justly
by the work of her own hands,--is she in no danger of this law?
Lonely and friendless, and poor, is she in no danger of a false
accusation from malice or from error? especially since under this
law _homeless_ girls are particularly marked out as just subjects
for its operation; and if she is accused, what has she to rely on,
under God, except that of which this law deprives her, the appeal
to be tried 'by God and my country,' by which it is understood
that she claims the judicial means of defense to which the law of
the land entitles her?

"I will only add that this law has a fatally corrupting influence
over the male youth of every country where it is in force. It
warps the conscience, and confuses the sense of right and wrong.
When the State raises this immoral traffic into the position of a
lawful industry, superintended by Government officials, what are
the young and ignorant to think? They cannot believe that that
which the Government of the country allows, and makes rules for,
and superintends, is really wrong."