and that it is far from being, except by the law of proportion the “greatest market of human flesh in the world.”  But by carefully and curiously misrepresenting the sporadic as the systematic, and by declaring that the “practice of procuration has been reduced to a science” (instead of being, we will suppose, one of the fine arts), it is easy to make out a case of the grossest calumny and most barefaced scandal against any great capital.

The revelations of the Pall Mall were presently pooh-pooh’d at home; but abroad their effect was otherwise.  Foreigners have not yet learned thoroughly to appreciate our national practice of washing (and suffering others to wash) the foulest linen in fullest public.  Mr. Stead’s unworthy clap-trap representing London as the head-quarters of kidnapping, hocussing, and child-prostitution, the author invoking the while with true Pharisaic righteousness, unclean and blatant, pure intentions and holy zeal for good works was welcomed with a shout of delight by our unfriends the French, who hold virtue in England to be mostly Tartuffery, and by our cousins-german and rivals the Germans, who dearly love to use us and roundly abuse us.  In fact, the national name of England was wilfully and wrongfully defiled and bewrayed by a “moral and religious” Englishman throughout the length and breadth of Europe.

Hard upon these “revelations” came the Eliza Armstrong case whereby the editor of the “Sexual Gazette” stultified thoroughly and effectually his own assertions; and proved most satisfactorily, to the injury of his own person, that the easiest thing in the world is notably difficult and passing dangerous.  An accomplice, unable to procure a “maiden” for immoral purposes after boasting her ability as a procuress, proceeded to kidnap one for the especial benefit of righteous Mr. Stead.  Consequently, he found himself in the dock together with five other accused, male and female; and the verdict, condemning the archplotter to three months and the assistants to lesser terms of imprisonment for abduction and indecent assault, was hailed with universal applause.  The delinquent had the fanatical and unscrupulous support, with purse and influence, of the National Vigilance Association, a troop of busybodies captained by licensed blackmailers who of late years have made England their unhappy hunting-ground.[FN#446] Despite, however, the “Stead Defence Fund” liberally supplied by Methody; despite the criminal’s Pecksniffan tone, his self-glorification of the part he had taken, his effronte boast of pure and lofty motives and his passionate enthusiasm for sexual morality, the trial emphasised the fact that no individual may break the law of the land in order that good may come therefrom.  It also proved most convincingly the utter baselessness of the sweeping indictment against the morality of England and especially of London—­a charge which “undoubtedly had an enormous influence for harm at home and cruelly prejudiced the country