fant was meant to be preferved, lifted it from the ground in his
aims ; i f he neglefted that ceremony, the child, it would feem,
was confidered as doomed to expofure in the highway. Thus,
in the Andrian o f Terence, where, though the fcene is not laid
in Rome, Roman cuftoms are d e fc r ib e d ,q u id q u id peperiffet,
B decreverunt tollere.” “ Let it be boy or girl they have re-
“ folved to lift it from the ground.” : Nor. indeed is fecret infanticide
unknown in modern Europe, although it may be ow ing
to a different principle. In fuch cafes, the fenfe o f fhame and
the fear o f encountering the fcom and obloquy o f the world
have determined the conduit o f the unhappy mother, before
the feelings o f nature could have time to operate. For I am
willing to hope that none who had ever experienced a mother’s
feelings and a mother’s jo y would confent by any means, direft
or indireft, or under any imprefiion o f fear o f fhame, o f fcorn,
or biting penury, to the deftruftion o f a new-born babe. And
I may venture to fay with confidence, that a Britiih cottager,
however indigent, would divide his fcanty pittance among a
dozen children rather than confent to let fome o f them perilh,
that he and the reft might fare the better, were even our laws
as tacit on this fubjeft as thofe o f China.
Some o f the Chriftian miflionaries, in their accounts o f this
country, have attempted to palliate the unnatural a ft o f expof-
ing infants, by attributing it to the midwife, who they pretend
to fay, from knowing the circumftances o f the parents, ftrangle
the.child without the knowledge o f the mother, telling her that
the infant was ftill-born. Others have afcribed the praftice to a
belief in' the metempfycofis, or tranfmigration o f fouls into
other
other bodies; that the parents, feeing their children mnft
be doomed to. poverty, think it is better at once to let the
foul efcape in fearch o f a more happy afylum, than to linger in.
one condemned to want and wretchednefs. No degree o f fu-
perftition, one would imagine, could prevail upon a parent to
reafon thus, in that moll anxious and critical moment when
the combined efforts o f hope and fear, o f exquifite jo y and
fevere pain, agitate by turns the mother’s breaft. Befides, the
Ghinefe trouble themfelves very little with fuperftitious notions,
unlefs where they apprehend fome perfonal danger. Nor is it
more probable that the midwife ihould take upon herfelf the
commiffion o f a concealed and voluntary murder o f an innocent
and helplefs infant, for the fake o f fparing thofe feelings in another,
o f which the fuppofition implies ihe could not poffibly
partake; and if ihe ihould be encouraged by the father, whofe
affeftions for an infant child may be more gradually unfolded
than the mother’ s, to perpetrate fo horrid an aft, we muft allow
that to the exiftence o f unnatural and murtherous parents muft
be added that o f hired ruifians; fo that Chinefe virtue would
gain little by fuch a fuppofition.
It is much more probable that extreme poverty and hopeleis
indigence, the frequent experience o f direful, famines, and the
fcenes o f mifery and calamity occafioned by them, afting on
minds whofe affeftions are not very powerful, induce this unnatural
crime which common cuftom has encouraged, and which is
not prohibited by pofitive law. That this is the cafe, and that future
advantages are not overlooked, will appear from the cir-
cumftance o f almoft all the infants that are expofed being females,