THE EXPULSION OF CAPTAIN VERNEY.
WE have no wish to say one unnecessary word about the case of Captain Verney. The consequences it entails, not on the offender only, but, at all events as regards their own feelings, on his innocent relations, are too obvious and too grave to leave room for rhetorical amplification. The only thing that leads us to mention it at all is the need that undoubtedly exists of marking the distinction between this case and others which may be hastily confounded with it. Some people are inclined to say that punishment such as has overtaken Captain Verney should be meted out to all breaches of the Seventh Com- mandment or none ; that the House of Commons would have shown more consistency if it had either left Captain Verney alone, or had acted with equal severity in certain other cases which have become notorious during the last few years. Both these extreme conclusions are wrong, and it is worth while to show, if we can, why they are wrong. We shall not dwell on the distinction created by the legislation which has made Captain Verney's act a criminal offence, and has not affixed the same stigma to other acts which, in the opinion of some excellent people, are not essentially different from it. Legislatures are not in- fallible, and the fact that Captain Verney is undergoing imprisonment, while others have only been visited with such penalties as their own consciences or the opinion of the public are able to inflict on them, is no proof that the distinction is a sound one. What we have rather to inquire is, whether there is enough in Captain Verney's offence to justify the exceptional treatment which Parliament, by passing the Criminal Law Amendment Act, and the House of Commons by carrying Mr. Smith's motion on Tuesday, have agreed to assign to it. Captain Verney might have seduced a girl under circumstances of exceptional cruelty, and no harm would have come to him. He arranges, so to say, to have a girl found for him to seduce, and he is imprisoned and expelled from the House of Commons. Is this just ? We say that it is just, and that for two reasons. The first is, that the law which punishes Captain Verney is designed to give a kind of protection which it is possible for the law to give. Effectual protection against seduction is impossible, since all effectual protection postulates the co-operation of the person to be protected. But it is per- fectly possible to give protection against such attempts as Captain Verney's. Supposing that seduction were made criminal, there would be nothing really deterrent about the statute which made it so. The person in whose interest the statute was passed could be trusted in the majority of cases not to invoke it against the seducer. She would have been a consenting party to her own fall, and, except for the purpose of levying black-mail--which is hardly a purpose to be furthered by legislation—she would never be likely to put the Public Prosecutor in motion. But in Captain Verney's case there was no seduction, properly so called. Ho arranges that a young girl shall be induced to go abroad in the expectation of getting employment, his calculation being that when she finds herself alone in a strange country, she will not have the resolution to resist his proposals. There is no reason why the law should not punish such conduct as this which would not be equally valid against punishing any use whatever of false pretences. The subject of the protection is anxious to be protected, and is willing to do all in her power to protect herself. There is no fear that she will make the law of no avail by condoning the offence com- mitted. against it. Such a law in no way offends against the common and useful distinction between vice and crime. Captain Verney's act was essentially criminal, because the wrong he sought to do was to be done. to an unwilling victim.
The second reason why the law is just, is that this offence is one of peculiar cruelty as regards both its con- ception and its possible consequences. There is something more cold-blooded in a conspiracy to entice an unknown young woman abroad for an immoral purpose, than in a conspiracy to similarly entrap a particular young woman. In the latter case, the man might be im- pelled by passion ; in the former case, there is no ques- tion of passion or affection of any kind. One young woman is as good as another, provided that she pos- sesses certain qualifications. This kind of calculation deserves no pity, while at the same time it does not dis- able a man from counting the cost. Under the influence of passion, man will defy any law ; but we believe that Captain Verney's sentence will operate as a very real deterrent to any one who is inclined to follow his example. Then as regards the consequences to the girl. Captain Verney must have been fully aware how immeasurably worse these were likely to be in a foreign capital than in her own country ; how much less chance she would have of getting back to her home ; how much more assured and fatal would be her moral descent. A man who is willing in cold blood to condemn a young woman to such a fate deserves all that he has got. Some of our readers may be inclined to add : " Yes, and much more." Twelve months', they will argue, imprisonment is a very inadequate penalty for such conduct as Captain Verney's. Here, however, we cannot follow them. There are greater offenders than Captain Verney, lower depths than those which he has sounded. In the interest of young women exposed to similar attempts, it would not be expedient to weaken any one of the few safeguards which are left to them. When Captain Verney discovered that the girl would not listen to him, he went no further in the way either of persuasion or of coercion. He desisted at once, and made provision for her return to England. Had he taken a different line, she might have suffered a good deal more, and it is well that any future offender meeting with similar resistance should be encouraged, by the knowledge that such a course will at least lead to a mitigation of sentence, to accept it as equally final.
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