§ MR. CAVENDISH BENTINCKasked the Secretary of State for the Homo Department, Whether he has been informed that at a public meeting for the repeal of the Contagious Diseases Acts, held at St. James's Hall, on the 28th February last, Mr. Stevenson A. Blackwood, C.B., Secretary of the General Post Office, made the following observations:—
We denounce and oppose these Acts, because they are an outrage upon the weaker and most defenceless portion of the population, whom they hand over to the mercies of a spy-police, and to the danger of imprisonment without trial. These Acts must be demoralizing to the agents who enforce them, for what can we think of a system which is used to put money into the hands of the spy-police to lead women into acts of sin with themselves in order that they may be detected and in order to denounce them:whether it is true that any case has occurred where a person has been imprisoned without trial under the provisions of the Acts; whether there is any foundation for the assertion that the mode in which the Contagious Diseases Acts have been administered is demoralizing to the agents who have enforced them; and, whether any case has ever occurred of money being put into the hands of the police for the purposes mentioned by Mr. Blackwood?
§ SIR WILLIAM HARCOURTI have not seen the speech to which the right hon. and learned Gentleman refers. With reference to the last three paragraphs in the Question, the statements in those paragraphs are incorrect and unfounded.