IMMORAL LEGISLATION

A Statement Printed (but Not Published) For the Information of the Commissioners of the Presbyterian Church in Canada, Meeting in General Assembly, Montreal, June 10, 1885This clause, purporting to reach procurers and to punish the traffic in vice, has proved so ineffective that probably no conviction of this very common crime has ever been obtained under it. Moreover, the moral sense of the community rebels against a law which singles out the agent for punishment, and expressly exempts the greater criminal, the principal. The words other than the procurer have been interpolated here, they are not in the British act from which the clause has otherwise been copied. Trafficers in vice and inciters te debauchery are punished in, almost every civilized country in the world. The law-makers even of France, perhaps the most brothel-ridden country in Europe have put our legislators to shame by branding as a crime (see article 334 of the penal code) the inciting, abetting, or facilitating immorality in youths of either sex up to the age of twenty-one, and that without the false-pretense reservation or the omission of the conspirator-ia-chief from the scepe of the law. Procuration commonly involves conspiracy, and hence the common-law pro vision that a conspiracy to cause immorality or indecency is an offence might be re-enacted here with good results. In any. Event there should be no limit of age where fraud is used and as regards girls who are minors the clause should be imperative, should cover attempts to procure, should include principal as well as agent, and also all persons who aid or abet in the act of infamy.About the PublisherForgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.comThis book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In