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LIFE IN MONTREAL. [Chap. VII. 



Societies ready to meet their arguments. ... A few years ago 

 the Sanitary Association, No. 2, consisting of the City Health 

 Officers and their friends, memorialized the City Council to 

 introduce this system among us. I immediately discussed the 

 matter with my friend, Mr. Clark, the late editor of " The True 

 Witness," who undertook to ascertain the sentiments of Mons. 

 Bourget [the Roman Catholic Bishop] on the subject. His 

 reply was an emphatic statement, that the Catholic hierarchy and 

 clergy would never consent to the licensing of brothels or of 

 prostitutes. At the same time, I called on the Protestant 

 Bishop and several of their clergy, and obtained the same 

 assurance. Feeling assured, therefore, that no such licensing 

 power could be exercised, by either the Council or the Legis- 

 lature, against the emphatic condemnation of the Christian 

 Church, I let the matter drop ; determining, however, to 

 embrace the earliest opportunity of organizing another Health 

 Association, which should not thus disgrace itself before the 

 highest Tribunal." 



The Contagious Diseases Acts do not, in so many words, 

 license vice : but, so far from being a safeguard against profligacy, 

 they are actually designed to protect it. They are founded on 

 a principle which would bring sanitary legislation into contempt, 

 and would be fatal to its efficiency ; for they deal only with 

 one sex in a disease to which both are liable : * they are 

 dastardly in their oppression of the weak, and have introduced 

 a base and dangerous spy-system : the horrible evils which 

 have grown up in Paris are now matters of notoriety. The 

 point, however, which Philip urged specially on the Cure was, 

 that the sanction of law would virtually be given to a fatal 

 sin : — " Will any one propose to license thieves, houses for 

 stolen goods, kidnappers, and poisoners ? Even these could 

 show that, in some respects, their callings are not so fiendish 

 as that of buying and selling the very holiest functions of our 

 nature." Philip wrote a note in French accompanying this 



* One of the chief movers for copying the Acts in Canada was at the 

 head of the opposition to compulsory vaccination for both sexes and all 

 ranks ! 



