The Constitution of the United States A Brief Study of the Genesis, Formulation and Political Philosophy of the Constitution
TO THE HON. HARRY M. DAUGHERTY ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES A TRUE AND LOYAL FRIEND, A FAIR AND CHIVALROUS FOE With whom it is the author's great privilege to collaborate as Solicitor-General in defending and vindicating in the Supreme Court of the United States the principles and mandates of its Constitution _Chamonix_, _July_ 14 1922 _Preface by the Earl of Balfour_[1] I have been greatly honoured by your invitation to take the chair on
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:
"By this law, policemen,--not the local police, but special
Government police, in plain clothes,--are employed to look after
all the poor women and girls in a town and its neighborhood. These
police spies have power to take up any woman they please, on
_suspicion_ that she is not a moral woman, and to register her
name on a shameful register as a prostitute. She is then forced to
submit to the horrible ordeal of a personal examination of a kind
which cannot be described here. It is an act on the part of the
Government doctor such as would be called an indecent or criminal
assault if any other man were to force it upon a woman. And it is
the _State_ which forces this indecent assault on the persons of
the helpless daughters of the poor.
"If a woman refuses to submit to it, she is punished by
imprisonment, with or without hard labor, _until_ she does submit.
"If, after she has endured this torture, she is found to be healthy
TO THE HON. HARRY M. DAUGHERTY ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES A TRUE AND LOYAL FRIEND, A FAIR AND CHIVALROUS FOE With whom it is the author's great privilege to collaborate as Solicitor-General in defending and vindicating in the Supreme Court of the United States the principles and mandates of its Constitution _Chamonix_, _July_ 14 1922 _Preface by the Earl of Balfour_[1] I have been greatly honoured by your invitation to take the chair on