CHAPTER II.

I have now set forth the great principles of Magna Charta, and the foundations of these principles, and have endeavoured to show how much English liberty depends on the preservation of jury trial. I have now to show how the Contagious Diseases Acts destroy these bulwarks of English liberty.

Before doing this, however, it is well to dispose of one vague objection, which may exist in some people’s minds, to arguments against these Acts based on the universality of civil rights. There is abroad in many men’s minds a vague sort of notion that these Acts in question as they stand on the statute-book of England apply to the army and navy. We cannot perhaps wonder at this mistake—although it is an extraordinary mistake—existing more or less in the minds of the partially informed, when we find that the Member for a learned University, who last session led the opposition in the House to Mr. Fowler’s motion for the repeal of the Acts, based his arguments for the existence of these Acts on the State necessity of having a standing army! Such statements as these are calculated to lead the public to imagine that these Acts have at least some connection, more or less remote, with the army and navy, and in this way to allay those just alarms which must necessarily arise from the violation of the constitutional rights of civilians.

Now the fact is, that so far from these Acts applying particularly to the army and navy, they in no way whatsoever apply to the army and navy, but entirely and exclusively to the civil population. The one and only connection which they have with the army and navy is, that the districts to which they apply are those within at least ten miles of which soldiers or sailors are resident. But in these districts they apply not to soldiers or sailors, but to the civil population, and to the civil population only. The word soldier or sailor does not occur in the whole Act, nor is there anything whatsoever about the army or navy, or any hint, the most remote, of any connection with the army or navy, except this, that the whole powers of carrying out the Acts are intrusted to the Admiralty and War Office. In fact, the jurisdiction of these offices is by these Acts extended over a large portion of the civil population of England. Nay, so little has the Act to do with soldiers and sailors, that it does not even commence with the preamble which, unless it had distinctly acknowledged its necessary separation from the army and navy, we should have expected to find in some such words as these, “Considering the increase of contagious disease in her Majesty’s army and navy,” and so forth. Over and above the obvious fact, that women, to whom alone the Act applies, are in no case members of these honourable services, the Acts do not even profess in any way whatsoever to apply particularly to those women who associate with soldiers and sailors, but distinctly leave us to infer the opposite; for in clause 4, Act 1869, directions are given for procedure against any woman whom the policeman believes to have been, under certain circumstances, in the company of _men_ resident within the limits to which the Act applies, the word “men” being used with no reference to soldiers or sailors at all. In fact, the idea that the Acts apply in any way to the army or navy is so absolutely unfounded, that a confutation of it seems almost absurd, and I would not have mentioned it but for the fallacious notion on this point promoted apparently by the supporters of the Acts, encouraged by such statements as that of Dr. Lyon Playfair, already referred to, and confirmed by the natural practice of most persons of taking their information as to an Act of Parliament at second hand. In passing I would, however, point it out as a very grave objection to these Acts, that they extend the jurisdiction of the Admiralty and War Office over the civil population, and that they intrust to these offices such extensive and arbitrary powers as we shall shortly see that they do.[22]

The Contagious Diseases Acts, as now in force, consist essentially of the following clauses:—