Human Physiology. 61 



I do not wish to exaggerate the evils of our social state, but 

 we must look them in the face. I am willing to make fair 

 allowance for the excited feelings of clergymen and philanthro- 

 pists, and would fain believe that Mr. Gee of Lincolnshire was 

 in error when he said that, of the lower class of women in the 

 country, forty-nine in fifty were bad ; and that the Rev. Mr. 

 Worsley exaggerated in saying that "the almost universal 

 absence of chastity and purity among the labouring classes in 

 our country villages is notorious to every one at all acquainted 

 with them." 



Another clergyman, whose name I do not now recall, testified 

 that, to the best of his belief, there was not one virtuous girl 

 over fourteen years of age in the labouring class of his rural 

 parish. 



Among the causes, as they are called, but rather outlets or 

 manifestations of immorality, effects and causes combined, 

 have been, the statute fairs and yearly hirings in many districts. 

 The farm and domestic servants gather to be hired. The 

 roughs of the neighbourhood congregate, and the whole becomes 

 a saturnalia of drunkenness and debauchery. 



Justice to the lower classes requires us to admit, however, 

 that it is not they alone who are guilty. The middle and 

 upper classes have their full share in this iniquity. Of the 

 million female servants in England and Wales, a great many 

 are led into evil by their masters or the grown-up sons of the 

 families in which they live. One hears of so-called respectable 

 men, fathers of families, with whom no female servant is safe. 

 A great number of cases of infanticide come from the class of 

 domestic servants. Then, nearly the whole class of prostitutes, 

 of whom we have yet to speak, are supported in their wasteful 

 and miserable lives by men of the middle and upper ranks of 

 life; and they, too, are guilty of most of the seductions which 

 recruit the ranks of the army of abandoned women. If the 

 women of the lower classes are to a large extent licentious, a 



