Josephine E. Butler

CHAPTER X.

THE FEDERATION

The year 1875 has few clear recollections for me personally, in direct connection with our cause. Six years of work, and more especially the winter months spent in very difficult work on the Continent, had over-taxed my strength. My health gave way, and was only restored by several months of rest, during which I heard only the distant echoes of the conflict, while I remained at home.

During this autumn Une Voix dans le Désert was ably edited by M. Aimé Humbert, and brought out in French and German, and widely circulated. It consisted of my addresses given on the Continent during the previous winter. These addresses, spoken in French, were never published in English, but were translated year by year into other languages – Italian, German, Spanish, Dutch, Danish, Swedish, Norwegian and Russian. The following letter refers to this work.

I feel with you every day that some such voice is needed just now. It would perhaps have been better had we been able to bring out a complete book as our first, a book which should contain all the scientific and juridical arguments, as well as a complete review of historical facts relating to this subject. But such a complete book is at this moment impossible. I therefore beg you to communicate what I now say to Messieurs Sandoz and Fischbacher (publishers). We want statistics and facts – yes, – but would English statistics and facts alone, drawn from a limited experience, be much or generally valued in other countries? I think not, if they stood alone. Facts from a larger area we must have later, and we shall have them, for, thank God, they stand as indestructible witnesses everywhere of the folly and futility of the attempt to regulate vice. How much more powerful, how overwhelming in fact, would it be for our opponents, and how strengthening for our cause, if we could show facts and statistics gathered from every country, and over a larger period of time. This is precisely what we are now aiming at. We have received all the most recent reports from Italy, France, Germany, and other countries. On every hand there is confession of the failure of regulation. Mireur, Jeannell, Diday, Deprès, Pallasciano, Huet, Crocq, all confess to hygienic failure. The proposals of some of these men to ensure future success (a success which they confess they have never yet ensured) are of such a wild and ghastly nature, that one has only to read their books to see that the beginning of the end is at hand. From out these statistics there appear, here and there, deeply pathetic facts, such as these: that four-fifths of the poor girls subjected to this tyranny (according to one writer) are orphans; many are foreigners in the country of their enslavement; many are young widows. Does not our God, who is the God of the Fatherless, of the Widow, and of the Stranger, take note of these things? You see that in a year or two we shall have a mass of evidence against this system which will give the doctors and materialist legislators a hard task to refute. I care little that men accuse me, as you say, of mere sentiment, and of carrying away my hearers by feeling rather than by facts and logic. Even while they are saying this they read my words, and they are made uncomfortable! They feel that there is a truth of some sort there, and that sentiment itself is after all a fact and a power when it expresses the deepest intuitions of the human soul. They have had opportunity for many years past of looking at the question in its material phases, of appreciating its hygienic results, and of reading numberless books on the subject – statistical, medical, and administrative. Now for the first time they are asked to look upon it as a question of human nature, of equal interest to man and woman; as a question of the heart, the soul, the affections, the whole moral being. As a simple assertion of one woman speaking for tens of thousands of women, those two words “we rebel” are very necessary, and very useful for them to hear. The cry of women, crushed under the yoke of legalised vice, is not the cry of a statistician or a medical expert; it is simply a cry of pain, a cry for justice, and for a return to God’s laws in place of these brutally impure laws invented and imposed by man. It is imperfect, no doubt, as an utterance, but the cry of the revolted woman against her oppressor, and to her God, is far more needful at this moment than any reasoned-out argument. I think therefore, and my husband agrees with me, that it is better to publish the Voice in the Wilderness simply as the utterance of a woman, and to do it quickly. It will rouse some consciences, no matter how imperfect men may find it. On the eve of a war it may be said that the sound of the trumpet is imperfect because it only calls to the battle, and that we want to see the troops, their arms, and the strength of muscle on either side. Yet the call to battle is needed; the close grappling with the foe will follow. It is only when the slave begins to move, to complain, to give signs of life and resistance, either by his own voice, or by the voice of one like himself speaking for him, that the struggle for freedom truly begins. The slave now speaks. The enslaved women have found a voice in one of themselves, who was raised up for no other end than to sound the proclamation of an approaching deliverance. Never mind the imperfection of the first voice. It is the voice of a woman who has suffered, a voice calling to holy rebellion and to war. It will penetrate. Then by and by we shall come down on our opponents with the heavy artillery of facts and statistics and scientific arguments on every side. We will not spare them, we will show them no mercy. We shall tear to pieces their refuge of lies, and expose the ghastliness of their covenant with death, and their agreement with hell. We and our successors will continue to do this year after year until they have no ground to stand upon.

Shortly after her return to England she had given an account of her mission, at a conference held in London, “in the course of which she showed that her own work abroad had had very little of a creative character, but had rather served to bring out and give expression to sentiments and convictions already existing in the various countries she had visited.” It was resolved at this conference to form a federation of the friends of the movement in all countries. “The British, Continental and General Federation for the Abolition of Government Regulation of Prostitution” was formally constituted at a meeting in Liverpool on March 19th, Mr. Stansfeld being chosen as President, Mr. W. Crossfield as Treasurer, and M. Aimé Humbert, of Neuchâtel, as Continental Correspondent. Mrs. Butler was appointed Hon. Secretary, with Mr. H. J. Wilson as co-Secretary pro tem. (he was succeeded a few months later by Mr. Stuart, who this year became Professor Stuart). The heavy work of correspondence connected with the starting of the Federation, added to the fatigues of the preceding winter’s work on the Continent, proved to be too much for her bodily strength, and she was compelled to give up all work for several months. The work however experienced no check, for during these months Mr. Wilson in England and M. Humbert on the Continent, by their untiring energy and earnestness, succeeded in gaining many adherents to the Federation, which was thus early put on a firm foundation.

In the following April the late Rev. J. P. Gledstone and Mr. H. J. Wilson started on a journey to the United States, where they met many leaders of the old anti-slavery party and other kindred spirits, whom they enlisted into sympathy and co-operation with the Federation. Writing to Josephine Butler twenty years later, Mr. Gledstone recalled the occasion of their starting on this journey: “It was, I remember, a cold, stormy Thursday in April, 1876, when you persisted in accompanying Mr. Wilson and me to the river, to see us on board the Adriatic. The anti-regulation struggle has seen some uncommon things; I think so now, as I recall your slender form seeking shelter from the keen wind that swept through the little tug that conveyed us to the huge steamer lying in the middle of the Mersey – two strong men sent out on their mission and cheered to it by one woman!”

This year Josephine Butler published anonymously, for the Social Purity Alliance, The Hour before the Dawn: an Appeal to Men. A French translation of this pamphlet was published the same year in Paris. Her name appeared on the title-page of the second edition, issued six years later. Its sustained eloquence and passionate, pathetic appeal combine to make it one of the finest of all her writings. It reveals the profoundest sympathy for all men, as well as women, who have sinned and are struggling to rise again. To such she preaches a gospel of hope, and shows that though the past is irreparable, there is always an available future. We can only give one extract, selected because of its autobiographical interest.

I look back to the years when my soul was in darkness on account of sin – the sin, the misery and the waste which are in the world, the great and sad problems of life, the prosperity of evil-doers, the innocent suffering for the guilty, the cruelties, the wrongs inflicted and never redressed, and the multitudes who seem to be created only to be lost. A great cloud gathered over me. Anger, fear, dismay filled my heart. I could see no God, or such as I could see appeared to me an immoral God. Sin seemed to me the law of the world, and Satan its master. I staggered on the verge of madness and blasphemy. I asked, “Does not God care? Can God bear these things?” He is silent, the woe deepens, and the question is still sent up from generation to generation, Hath God not seen? Will He not help? Does He look down from His eternal calm of heaven an indifferent spectator? Can it be that the Eternal rests content that any human beings whom He has created should perish for ever? That men should destroy themselves in spite of God is a terrible thought, but not so terrible, not so fatal to hope, to love, and to faith as the thought, full of deadly poison, that God cares not – that the heart of Him who redeemed us is cold, when my own is filled with an agony of compassion. This bitter thought taking possession of my soul, did not beget despondency, or lassitude, or indifference, leading me to close my eyes and fold my hands; but it stirred up the rebel within me. I could not love God – the God who appeared to my darkened and foolish heart to consent to so much which seemed to me cruel and unjust, and removable by an act of His power. I was like one who is leaning over a great gulf, whence none who fall into it ever return. “In my distress I cried unto the Lord, and He heard me.” The pride and rebellion gave way before deep and heavy sorrow; and then all the sorrow gathered itself up into one great cry. I asked of the Lord one thing – that He would take of His own heart and show it to me; that He would reveal to me His one, His constant attitude toward His lost world; that as I had shown Him my heart He would show me His heart, so much of it as a worm of the earth can comprehend and endure, so much of it as the finite can receive from the Infinite (for to know His love for the world and His sorrow for the world, as they are, would break any human heart. I should, in the moment of such a revelation, expire at His feet: a man cannot so see God and live). Deep calleth unto deep; His own helpful spirit, out of the depths of my heart, making supplication for me with groanings unutterable, calling to the deep heart of Christ, awakened echoes there which called back again to mine.

Continuing to make this one request through day and night, through summer and winter, with patience and constancy, the God who answers prayer had mercy on me. He did not deny me my request – that He should show me of His own heart’s love for sinners, and reveal to me His one, His constant attitude towards His lost world; and when He makes this revelation He does more – He makes the enquiring soul a partaker of His own heart’s love for the world. The doubt, the dark misery growing out of the contemplation of the sorrows of earth and the apparent waste of souls are no longer able to drive me into sullenness and despair, for I have found the door of hope. I do not say – for I speak neither more nor less than I have learned of God – that the perplexity is solved, that the sorrow is gone. Sorrow is with me still, the enduring companion of my life. I do not pretend to be able to explain the secrets of God and the great problems of life with any clearness of speech to satisfy another. But I have found the door of hope. He has the key of all mysteries, and we are then nearest to the solution of every painful mystery, when we have drawn nigh and heard from Him the secrets of His heart of love. Now I know when my heart is strangely stirred by the sight of a vast multitude in some great city that my heart’s yearnings over them are but the faintest shadowings of His heart’s yearnings over them; that my love, which would embrace them all, is but as a drop of water to the ocean of His love, which would embrace them all. But in vain! Words are not found in which to express what it is which Christ may reveal to the soul which has waited on Him in determined love and grief, with this one request, “Show me Thy heart’s love for sinners, and Thy one, Thy constant attitude towards Thy lost world.” Seek it, friends, and you shall know how far it solves the sorrowful problems of earth, though you too may find it to be among the things which it is not possible or lawful for a man to utter. Where, where in heaven or on earth, if not here, will you find an answer alike to the great questions of life which vex your heart, and to the problem of yourself, that single being, so fearfully and wonderfully made?

In the late autumn of 1876 a newspaper war suddenly broke out in France kindled by numerous cases of arbitrary and cruel action on the part of the Police des Mœurs, and frequent arrests both of men and women for resisting or even speaking against that force. As a result the Paris Municipal Council, which was opposed to the system, appointed a commission of enquiry, and the commission invited certain persons from different countries who had studied the question to give evidence before it. Mr. and Mrs. Butler, Mr. Stansfeld and Professor Stuart were invited from England, and they went to Paris for this purpose in January, 1877.

The members of the commission were not wholly of one mind on all points, and it was rather a severe exercise of brain and memory to meet and satisfy the various questions of a company of quick-witted, logical Frenchmen. It was an exercise however, which left one feeling stronger and happier, because of the sincerity of motive which we felt animated the questioners.

Some days after giving our evidence a great meeting was held in the Salle des Écoles, Rue d’Arras. The hall was densely crowded. There was a considerable proportion of “blue blouses,” working men from St. Antoine and Belleville quarters, students from the Latin quarter, and some members of the Chambers and of the Senate, besides Municipal Councillors. There was also a good attendance of women. The several addresses given were listened to with extraordinary attention and interest, and in a quietness which was remarkable considering the mercurial and excitable nature of a portion of that audience. So keen was the sympathy (having its roots deep in bitter experience) of the poorer part of the audience, especially the working men, that it was necessary in some degree to restrain all that it might have been in our hearts to say on the injustice and cruelty of the system of which the victims were drawn so largely from their own ranks.

Another large meeting was held in the Salle de la Redoute, which was crowded with respectable working women. With the memory of all I had seen and heard in Paris of the condition of the honest working woman, hunted from street to street and from room to room by the police, and looking at the troubled and earnest faces all turned towards me, I could not refrain from uttering these words: “The foxes have holes, and the birds of the air have nests, but the honest workwoman of Paris has not where to lay her head.” Many burst into tears, or hid their faces in their hands. In coming out from the meeting, several poor girls came to me, their faces swollen with weeping, and said, “Ah, madam, how true those words were about the foxes!”

The Federation had met for its first annual conference in London in 1876, and from that time it has held annual conferences in various cities abroad or in England; the meeting every third year being called a congress, and being of a larger and more important character. The first congress, at Geneva, is described in the following letter.

I can only give you a brief sketch of the past week; full reports will be published. The anxiety which we could not but feel went on augmenting up to Friday. On Friday we began to see daylight, and all has ended well. Many of us are tired and stupefied for want of sleep, but at the same time inwardly giving thanks to God.

This Congress has been a wonderful event. There were 510 inscribed members, besides the numerous public which attended the meetings. It is, they say, the largest Congress that has ever been held in Geneva. On the first days people continued flocking in from all nations. There were Greeks who came from Athens, and Russians from St. Petersburg and Moscow. There were Americans, Belgians, Dutch, Danes, Germans, Pomeranians, Italians, French and Spaniards. Señor Zorilla, the late President of the Spanish Cortes, spoke on Wednesday, and was nominated as one of a committee to consider what action should be taken in Spain. On Sunday, in the cathedral, Pastor Rœrich preached a powerful sermon to a very large congregation on the question before the Congress, and in all the churches we and our work have been prayed for.

We always anticipated that when the final resolutions should come to be voted upon then would be the real war, and so it was. When the voting began, our faithful bands of ladies worked and watched in their different sections quite splendidly. First we had a considerable conflict in the Social Economy Section. Then came the voting in the Legislative Section, in the smaller hall of the Reformation, which was densely crowded. Professor Hornung presided. The discussion lasted three hours. Some lawyers were present, who are now busy in the prospect of the revision of some parts of the penal code of Switzerland, notably a young jurist, an able man who spoke well, but as a downright opponent. There followed a stormy scene, which the President with difficulty controlled. People of many different languages stood up at the same moment, each with a finger stretched out, demanding to speak. “Je demande la parole” sounded from all sides of the room. Mr. A – , the young jurist, made the President indignant by asserting that a resolution drawn up by him was not juridique. Seeing that M. Hornung is Professor of Jurisprudence at the Geneva University, and possesses the very highest reputation, this was rather strong, and I do not wonder it irritated him. But it did good, for it stimulated him to come out on the last day of the Congress with a splendid judicial speech, by far the best and clearest utterance of the kind I have ever heard in any country. We shall translate and circulate it. Hornung is a delightful man. He has that good gift of God, an enlightened intellect, as well as a pure heart, together with great refinement and gentleness of manner. At one o’clock, when we were all feeling the need of food, and our throats were dry with the dust of the room, an Italian advocate got up and declared there had not yet been enough discussion of each point. The chairman was aghast. He had expected the voting to be got over just at that moment. A kind of barking, House of Commons cry arose of “Vote, vote!” while the President stood open-mouthed, attempting to read the resolutions so as to be heard. A sort of stampede seized some of the German and Swiss members, and they made for the door. Half the meeting would have gone out, and so damaged the worth of the voting. So I ventured to shut the door and set my back against it, declaring that no one should have any food until he had voted! This half startled and half amused the assembly, and they all sat down again obediently. After another half-hour of discussion, it was agreed that we should meet again for a final voting at half-past six the next morning.

On the same day the resolutions of the Moral Section were passed very satisfactorily. Then came the Hygienic Section. The discussion here was so long that it was also adjourned until an evening hour. At eight o’clock that evening we all went to the hall of the Hygienic Section, and there sat crowded together, or stood, amidst a scene of intense interest, till midnight. Dr. Bertani of Rome took a leading part. Our ladies all went to the meeting; but they had been up so early, and had worked so hard all day, that by 11.0 p.m. this is the scene which one of my sons described as having observed at the back of the hall, “a long row of ladies all sound asleep”; but they had appointed a watcher – Mrs. Bright Lucas – who sat at the end of the row, and whom they had charged to keep awake, and to give them the signal whenever voting began on each clause of the resolution. Mrs. Lucas was wide awake, with eyes shining like live coals! We had prayed that God would direct this meeting, and it was wonderful and beautiful to see how the truth prevailed. Dr. de la Harpe, the President, acted well throughout. At the end I shook hands with him and Dr. Ladame, thanking them for their excellent words. Dr. de la Harpe replied, “You owe us nothing; it is you and your friends who must be thanked, who have brought us so much light.”

At the end of the Congress all the resolutions came out satisfactorily. We owe a good deal of this result to Professor Stuart’s tact and patience in talking to the different presidents individually. We think our resolutions are on the whole excellent as a statement of principles – clear and uncompromising; and shall we not thank God for this? His hand has been over us for good all this time, convincing men’s hearts and consciences, and controlling their words and actions. The earnest daily prayers offered up have not been in vain. These resolutions will be sent to every Government and to every municipal council throughout Europe. They have been telegraphed to the English press in extenso. My son George was charged with the work of telegraphing, and had necessarily to exercise much alertness and activity. M. Humbert is impressed with the excellence of whatever work he undertakes.