Part 34 (1/2)
There is, however, another way of conjecturing the amount of disease introduced into the community by prost.i.tution, which English writers have adopted. The Medico-Chirurgical Review, a periodical of high standing, speaking of the extent of venereal disease and its effects on the population, says:
”There is every reason to believe that, to represent the public prost.i.tutes of England, Wales, and Scotland, fifty thousand is an estimate too low. We presume there will be no objection made to the a.s.sumption that, unless each of these fifty thousand prost.i.tutes submitted to at least one act of intercourse during every twenty-four hours, she could not obtain means sufficient to support life. The result of the evidence contained in the first report of the Constabulary force of England was that about two per cent. of the prost.i.tutes of London were suffering under some form of venereal disease. But yet we will descend even lower, and presume that of one hundred healthy prost.i.tutes, if each submits to one indiscriminate s.e.xual act in twenty-four hours, not more than one would become infected with syphilis; an estimate which is, without doubt, far too low, yet, if admitted to be correct, the necessary consequence will be, that of the fifty thousand prost.i.tutes, five hundred are diseased within the aforesaid twenty-four hours.
”If we next admit that a fifth of these five hundred diseased women are admitted to hospitals on the day on which disease appears, it follows there are every day on the streets four hundred diseased women. Let it be supposed that the power of these four hundred to infect be limited to twelve days, and that of every six persons who, at the rate of one each night, have connection with these women, five become infected, it will follow that _there will be four thousand men infected every night, and, consequently, one million four hundred and sixty thousand in the year_. Farther, as there are every night four hundred women diseased by these men, one hundred and eighty-two thousand five hundred public prost.i.tutes will be syphilized during the year, and hence _one million, six hundred, and fifty-two thousand, five hundred cases of syphilis in both s.e.xes occur every twelve months_. If, then, the entire population had intercourse with prost.i.tutes in an equal ratio, the gross population of Great Britain, of all ages and s.e.xes, would, during eighteen years, have been affected with primary syphilis. Be it remembered, we do not a.s.sert that more than a million and a half of persons are attacked every year, but that that number of cases occur annually in England, Wales, and Scotland, though the same individual may be attacked more than once. Although it is evident that all the estimates used for these calculations are (we know no other word that expresses it) ridiculously low, yet we find that more than a million and a half cases of syphilis occur every year, an amount which is probably not half the actual number. How enormous, then, must be the number of children born with secondary syphilis! how immense the mortality among them! how vast an amount of public and private money expended in the cure of this disease!”
CHAPTER XXVII.
MEXICO.
Spanish Conquest.--Treatment of Female Prisoners.--Mexican Manners in 1677.--Priesthood.--Modern Society.--Fas.h.i.+onable Life.--Indifference of Husbands to their Wives.--General Immorality.--Offenses.-- Charitable Inst.i.tutions.--The Cuna, or Foundling Hospital.
The social condition of Mexico is of importance, as it was formerly the chief seat of Spanish domination in America, and its manners and government gave the key to all the other colonies and viceroyalties which owed allegiance to the crown of Spain. Whatever the state of the native population may have been when Spanish leaders and their myrmidons burst upon them, and broke up the kingdom of the Mexican emperors, they rapidly succ.u.mbed beneath the l.u.s.t, avarice, and cruelty which were ever the distinctive features of Spanish warfare and conquest in every clime and against every people. Of the enormities perpetrated by these soldiers, the history of the Mexican conquest gives us innumerable instances; but one solitary example, from Bernal de Diaz, will be enough. He tells us that when they took women prisoners, they made a division of them at night for the sake of greater peace and quietness, and that they branded them with the marks of their owners. They were thus at liberty to choose the handsomest of the Indian women, and reserve them for their own uses. What these uses were can be easily supposed. The fate of less favored female prisoners is left in doubt; they were turned over to their savage allies, to be butchered in cold blood, or otherwise disposed of as most convenient.
From Mexico the flood of Spanish cruelty and immorality spread itself like a stream of lava over the whole of South America. The chivalry of the soldiery soon degenerated, and the self-denial and lofty motives, darkened though they were by bigotry and cruelty in some cases, which had distinguished the priests, were lost. Inglorious ease and luxurious indolence now superseded that love of adventure and unconquerable daring which distinguished Cortez and Pizarro, and their comrades: no trace of the old heroic character remained save the grinding oppression and reckless selfishness which usually accompany ambition.
An ill.u.s.tration of the loose manners which prevailed in Mexico among the clergy is to be found in the voyages of Thomas Page, a Dominican monk, who visited Mexico with some of his order on their road to the western coast of America and to Asia as missionaries.
From this work, published in 1677, we learn that the writer and his companions visited the prior of Vera Cruz on their journey, and, after a sumptuous dinner, adjourned, by invitation, to his cell. They found it richly tapestried and adorned with feathers of the birds of Michoacou; the walls were hung with various pictures of merit; rich rugs of silk covered the tables; porcelain of China filled the cupboards and sideboards, and there were vases and bowls containing preserved fruits and sweetmeats. ”My companions,” says he, ”were scandalized by such an exhibition. The holy friar talked to us of his ancestry, of his good parts, of the influence he had with the Father Provincial, of the love the princ.i.p.al ladies of the place bore him, of his beautiful voice and skill in music. He took his guitar and sang us a sonnet in praise of a certain lady.” Afterward, speaking of the Franciscans of Jalapa, Thomas Page says: ”Their lives are so free and immodest that it might be suspected with reason that they had renounced only that which they could not obtain.” After witnessing a gambling scene in a convent, he concludes that ”the cause of so many Friars and Jesuits pa.s.sing from Spain to regions so distant was libertinage rather than love of preaching the Gospel.”
The same writer subsequently pa.s.ses from portraiture to more general delineation, and thus depicts the body of the clergy: ”It seems that all wickedness is allowable, so that the churches and clergy flourish. Nay, while the purse is open to lasciviousness, if it be also open to enrich the temple walls and roof, it is better than any holy water.... In their lifetime the Mexicans strive to excel one another in their gifts to the cloisters of nuns and friars.”
”Among the benefactors was one, Alonzo Cuellar, so rich that he was reported to have a closet in his house laid with bars of gold instead of bricks. This man built a nunnery for Franciscan nuns, which cost him thirty thousand ducats, and left to it two thousand dollars yearly. And yet his life was so scandalous that commonly in the night, with two servants, he would go round the city visiting scandalous persons, and at every house letting fall a bead and tying a knot, that when he came home in the morning, he might number, by his beads, the uncivil stations he had visited that night.
”Great alms and liberality toward religious houses are coupled with great and scandalous wickedness. They wallow in the bed of riches and wealth, and make their alms the coverlet to conceal their loose and lascivious lives....
”I will not speak much of the lives of the friars and nuns of this city, but only that they enjoy there more liberty than in Europe, where they have too much, and that surely the scandals committed by them do cry up to heaven for vengeance, judgment, and destruction.
”It is ordinary for the friars to visit their devoted nuns, and to spend whole days with them, hearing their music and feeding on their sweetmeats. For this purpose they have many chambers, which they call loquatories, to talk in, with wooden bars between the nuns and them, and in these chambers are tables for the friars to dine at, and while they dine the nuns recreate them with their voices.”
We need no addition to these deep shadows from the dark pencil of so vigorous a limner as worthy Thomas Page, to delineate character nearly two hundred years ago, but we can scarcely believe it equally applicable to the present day. The reign of oppression in Mexico, it is to be hoped, is approaching its end, and recent events have shown that the population is alive to some of those truths which were long ago patent to all the world except those most intimately concerned.
Of modern Mexican society, an accomplished female writer, who had the best opportunities of judging, says:
”It is long before a stranger even suspects the state of morals in this country, for, whatever be the private conduct of individuals, the most perfect decorum prevails in outward behavior. But indolence is the mother of vice. They rarely gossip to strangers about their neighbors' faults. Habit has rendered them tolerably indifferent as to the _liaisons_ subsisting among particular friends, and as long as a woman attends church regularly, is a patroness of charitable inst.i.tutions, and gives no scandal by her outward behavior, she may do pretty much as she pleases. As for flirtations in public, they are unknown.”[322]
The present amiability of the Mexican ladies is admitted on all hands, as is the genial warmth of their manner. Some travelers, indeed, and among them Mr. Waddy Thompson, are of opinion that this is attributed to them as a fault, and that the reproach of unchast.i.ty is unjustly urged against them, as there is no city in Europe where there is less immorality. The constant presence of a duenna, and the house-porter, who is an appurtenance of every household of respectability, are excellent checks on immorality. But this would rather argue the necessity of a safeguard not found in the female virtue of Mexico. Besides, these appendages of rank have lost their real meaning, and the duenna may be converted into the convenient cloak or abettor of an intrigue, the more safe as she is the supposed protectress of the husband's honor. A native writer, in summing up the character of his countrymen, says that ”they are moderate in eating, but their pa.s.sion for liquor is carried to the greatest excess.
The affection which husbands bear their wives is certainly much less than that borne by wives to their husbands, and _it is very common for the men to love their neighbors' wives better than their own_.”[323] This one-sided censure presupposes, as a necessary consequence, that the neighbors' wives must show some reciprocity.
The general immorality of the lower cla.s.ses in Mexico would almost exclude the expectation of a system of prost.i.tution, as we usually understand the term. Puebla, a manufacturing town near Mexico, is summarily described as having a most devout female population, and a most abandoned one; but this is matter of conduct rather than of calling. The enumeration of offenses in the justice list of Mexico does not tell of one prost.i.tute, although it contains a large number of persons guilty of ”incontinence.” The exact meaning of this offense, in its legal and technical sense, is not given us, but we presume it relates to improper and disgusting practices. The charge of ”violation of public decency,” although it may relate to mutual familiarities, will probably include both indecency and immorality.
The following table gives the number of persons arrested in the city of Mexico in 1851.
+------------------------------------------------------+
Offenses.
Males.
Females.
Total.
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Drunkenness
1256
1944
3200
Affrays and wounds
728
246
974
Incontinence
354
403
757
Violations of public decency
311
318
629
Robbery
384
120
504
Suspicion of robbery
180
84
264
Carrying weapons