protection more than stealing or the lowest forms of gambling? Is it
not a lesser crime against human nature to rob a man of his money by
theft or by deceit and trickery than to snatch from him at one fell
swoop his health, his virtue, and his peace of mind? Why not as well
have laws to regulate burglary and assassination, allowing the
perpetrators of those crimes to ply their chosen avocations with
impunity under certain prescribed restrictions; if robbery, for
instance, requiring the thief to leave his victim money enough to make
his escape to another country; or, if murder, directing the assassin
to allow his intended victim time to repeat a sufficient number of _Ave
Marias_ to insure his safe transit through purgatory or to pay a priest
for doing the same? Such a course would not be inconsistent with the
policy which legalizes that infamous traffic in human souls,
prostitution.