Healthful Legislation.

White Ribbon, Volume 1, Issue 8, 1 February 1896, Page 1

Healthful Legislation.

We regret to notice that the Editor of the Lyttelton Times , in the issue of February 4th, saw fit to throw his influence into the scale with those who would in a most illiberal spit it —force an enactment on one half of the community, without the consent of that half, and in face of its re-iterated protest. It is useless to tell us, at this time of day, that the object is a hygienic one. We have abundance of proof, on the very highest medical authorities, to the contrary —proof that was so conclusive to the English Parliament that it resulted in the Acts being swept from the Statute Books of the Country in 1886. Are all England’s leaders fools? How is it that no attempt has been made to re-instate those Acts ?

We are aware that there are still medical men, and their blind followers, who assert that the en forcement of the Acts is a deterrent to disc as< . If they honestly believe this, why in the name of common sense do they not propose to subject men, who are in a similarly diseased condition, to the same treatment ? Had they recommended this course, we should have more faith in their sincerity. It does not require a college education, or a medical degree to see the fallacy, the stupidity, of the proposition to shut up half—perhaps the smaller half of the infected community for treatment, while allowing the other perhaps the larger half—to go free; free to spread the dire disease among other of their unfortunate fellow-creatures. if this enactment were a hygienic one, it would aiso be a moral one, for hygiene and morality could not possibly disagree; but we deny that it is either, and we are prepared to bring the high* ->t and strongest medical evidence to show that from a hygienic point of view the Acts are utterly useless. Nor is there any good ground for supposing that they could be made useful even were men subjected to the same indignities as women. The experience of authorities in the army, where men are, to a large extent, under supervision, shows th»s attempt to enforce the Acts have only resulted in greater secrecy, and the tlist as<» thus concealed, becomes more terrible and widespread in its results. We must not forget that what is morally wrong cannot be physically right; that God s laws are made for man s benefit, and that any attempt 10 evade them 01 their consequences, must result in failure. We trust that every good woman and every good man in this fair country will not rest until the C. D. Acts -those hideous blots on our Statute Books—are erased.