PROTECTION OF WOMEN.

Daily Southern Cross, Volume 3, Issue 143, 18 March 1848, Page 4

PROTECTION OF WOMEN.

A meeting has been held at Exeter— (the Bishop was not present) -lor the purpose of acknowledging and giving fuller effect to the efforts of the Associate Institution, established for the better protection of women by law. Public feeling is becoming more keenly alive to the great social evil ot female prostitution : more restless and intolerant of the organised system of soul and body murder : for a system it is, especially supported and earned out by well-dressed, monied hags, who, damned to tne cruslest of treachery, betray the young and artless of their own sex, as a profitable trade, as means or daily, loathsome bread.

" Do thou but think What 'tis to cream a maw, or clothe a back, From such a filthy vice : say to thyself Fiom their abominable and beastly touches 1 drink, I eat, array myself, and live." Very recently, the Chief Rabbi of the Jews denounced these dealers of his own creed in flesh and blood, threatening them with the worst displeasure of the synagogue. Such dealers are henceforth to be refuied admission to their ordinary place of worship ; their sons and their daughters are not fo be married by a Jewish priest ; and when they die are to be buried apart, as accurst, from the common dead. Should these denunciations have effect upon the people of Israel — hitherto filthily distinguished by their traffic in human abominations — ih^n will temnin to Christians alone a monopoly of profitable wickedness ; that is, if the trade be permitted to continue. True it is, many difficulties beset an attempt to reform throughout the syatem ; but the greater atrocity may, we think, be successfully grappled with. Say that a Mrs. Cole shall rob a man's daughter of her scarf, her necklace ; any piece of apparel or property ; and the father seeks satisfac- 1 tion in punishment of the thief at the Old Bailey. Say, however, that Sycorax rob 3 the girl herself, dooming her to pollution and a life of horror ; why, the procuress hag laughs at the law, and pockets her infernal wages. Surely — albeit we admit much difficulty in a general attempt at reform — surely, such an evil-doer may be seized and punished with a rigour demanded by the blaiphemy committed against human nature. — And whereas, we punish with equal force the receiver of stolen goods, when they are merely chatties, — so would we visit with heaviest vengeance of the law, the sensual coward who employs a wretch to betray to him his victim. We are well aware, however, that to propose such a law is to be met — and that, too, by easiest moralists in highest places — with the plea that, to attempt any legal restraint is to do more harm than good. " Better let matters remain as they are; there must be a certain amount of human abomination, and it is more decent that the law should suffer a veil to hang before it, than to expose the wickedness to the knowledge of outraged virtue and scandalized respectability." Such is the plea of even some lawmakers, peers, and commoners ; and such a plea from such people we receive with great distrust — with much suspicion. When they stickle for the necessity of the veil, the curtain of the law,— we have a sbreweil guess of the sort of convenient moralists who are fain to hide behind it. To blench from a consideration of the fmbject is not a just delicacy, but sheer cowardice. We acknowledge the sincerity of Mr. Spooner in hia championship of female purity. We acknowledge him as a great shining light (in paper laßthorn)— a burning warning in the foulest ways of the world. But the evil lies deeper in the mill-stone than is visible to the eye of Mr. Spooner. Poverty, hideous poverty, is the great causa of female misery and degradation throughout the country. It is hunger, want, that generates vice. When women are denied a sufficiency of bread by honest labour,— they are made prone to listen to temptation, and " turn to folly." We put it to Mr. Spooner to calculate how many sempstresses, shoebinders, and others withering upon insufficient wages when labouring with their hands, seek at this moment a shorter path to the grave by walking the streets ? It is for the political economist, even more than for the man of morale, to consider the remedy for the wide curse of female prostitution. And political economy preaches—" Thou must not increase and multiply, lest there be no room at the table." We would moreover advise Mr. Spooner and his brother missionaiies to consider the ways of the army. Prostitution best flourishes in the vicinityn ity of barracks. None but the brave— runs the slang of the canteen— deserve the hit.— -Douglas Jerrold's Weekly Newspaper.

New Motive Power.— The French Minister of Public Works, accompanied by M. Legrand, Under Secretary of State, visited a specimen of railway work by compressed air, invented by M. Andrand, to which the inventor has given the name of Chemins Eoliques, to distinguish it from the atmospheric tystem already in operation both in England and France. After a careful inspection of the details concerning the compression of the air, its storing in the reservoir, tube, &c, and having taken a short ride over the part already completed, the Minister highly complimented M. Andrand on his invention, and expressed a desire to be present at the inauguration of the first line to be worked oa the principle. Remarkable Fact.— lt appears that many of the French journals are conducted by Englishmen and Scotchmen, who write articles in a foreign tongue, and act ja»t as well as native editors. One of the principal Havre newspapers is conducted by a Scotchman. The most important weekly newspaper of Paris is edited by an Englishman, and one of his principal contributes is an Englishman. To one or two of the daily newspapers, literary contributions from our countrymen are not rare j and in the management of more than one of the light awusing periodicals of the day, they take an active part. These factß are a striking proof of our national superiority. And is it not really a remarkable thing, that Britons should manage French newspapers, should write in the French language on French affairs, for the information of Frenchmen ? Is it not, too, a marvellous sign of the times, that instead of thinking it a national duty to cut French throats, aud hate Frenchmen, we dabble in their periodical literature ? What would our solemn old grandpapas say, if they were to see such things ? An electrical clock is to be erected in the tower of Wenham church, near Ipswich, and the motive power is to be incessantly maintained by a perpetual electric current from the earth. A book has been published to prove that " beardshaving and the common uses of the razor constitute an unnatural, irrational, unminly, ungodly, aid fatal fashion among Christian*." A wholesale house has been opened in London, under the title of " The Literarium," at which »|l productions of literature, from a theological treatise clown to a quack advertisement, can be supplied on reasonable terms, and in the strictest canfidence. A vein of gold, yielding 5'J dollars worth of pure metal to the bushel, has been discovered in the ricinity of Asheborough, N. C. It ia the richest vein yet found in the United States.