Women becoming, consequently, weaker, in mind and body, than
they ought to be, were one of the grand ends of their being taken into
the account, that of bearing and nursing children, have not sufficient
strength to discharge the first duty of a mother; and sacrificing to
lasciviousness the parental affection, that ennobles instinct,
either destroy the embryo in the womb, or cast it off when born.
Nature in every thing demands respect, and those who violate her
laws seldom violate them with impunity. The weak enervated women who
particularly catch the attention of libertines, are unfit to be
mothers, though they may conceive; so that the rich sensualist, who
has rioted among women, spreading depravity and misery, when he wishes
to perpetuate his name, receives from his wife only an half-formed
being that inherits both its father's and mother's weakness.
Contrasting the humanity of the present age with the barbarism of
antiquity, great stress has been laid on the savage custom of exposing
the children whom their parents could not maintain; whilst the man
of sensibility, who thus, perhaps, complains, by his promiscuous
amours produces a most destructive barrenness and contagious
flagitiousness of manners. Surely nature never intended that women, by
satisfying an appetite, should frustrate the very purpose for which it
was implanted?
I have before observed, that men ought to maintain the women whom
they have seduced; this would be one means of reforming female
manners, and stopping an abuse that has an equally fatal effect on
population and morals.
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