🚀 go-pugleaf

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."

Such measures as these have acquired a foothold in the United States
more than once, but have been driven out again. They are proposed
every year almost, at some State Legislature, and often have been
proposed at several different legislatures during a single year. They
are in operation, to some extent at least, under the United States
flag at Hawaii, in the Philippines, and at Porto Rico. The enforcement
of the Acts must depend to a large extent upon the co-operation of the
male fornicator with the police and officers of the law, and places
good women and girls terribly in the power of malicious or designing
libertines.

It appears from official records, that in Hong Kong, during six months
in 1886-7, out of 139 women denounced by British soldiers and sailors
as havin