[1053] Marggrafs Chymische Schriften, ii. p. 119. This author says the cakes must be only as thick as the back of a knife; but that which I obtained in the year 1782 from Bologna, was an inch English measure in diameter, and two lines in thickness. It still weighs, after the brass box in which I long preserved it between cotton in a luminous state, has become black, and itself has lost its virtue, three drachms. In colour it has a perfect resemblance to the star which Marggraf prepared from German stones, and presented to Professor Hollman, and which is now in my possession. It is contained in a capsule of tin plate, over which a piece of glass is cemented.
[1054] Ferber’s Briefe aus Wälschland, p. 75.
[1055] Polyhist. i. 1, 13, 26, p. 127.
FOUNDLING HOSPITALS.
Child-murder is so unnatural a crime, that mankind can be brought to the commission of it only by the greatest desperation, for which unfortunately there is too much cause. To parents who are just able by incessant labour to procure those things indispensably necessary to support life, the birth of every child increases the fear of starving or of being reduced to beggary. Those who have secured to them a scanty subsistence, but who live amidst the torments of slavery, wish to the new-born child, which at any rate is doomed to death, a speedy dissolution, before it can know that it has had the misfortune to be brought into the world, in order that they may not bequeath to it their poverty. A young female who has acquired by education the most delicate sense of honour and shame, finds herself, on the birth of an illegitimate child, exposed at once to the utmost disgrace and contempt. Her misfortune, though viewed with an eye of pity by the compassionate, excites the hatred of the greater part of her relations and friends, by whom she was before loved and respected, and who endeavoured to render her happy; and often amidst the most poignant feelings, and an agitation bordering on madness, she sees no other means of saving her honour than the total concealment of her error by destroying the child: a resolution which, notwithstanding the vigilance of the laws, is too often attended with success. A young woman who at this moment finds herself suddenly despised and neglected by her admirer, who gained her affections by the most powerful of all means, love and confidence, and obtained from her what she can never recover, is often induced, in a fit of despair, to vent her fury on the consequences of her seduction—the child of her seducer.
These misfortunes of mankind are among the disadvantages attending civilised society, which always render marriage more difficult as well as burthensome, and thereby make it impossible to gratify one of the most powerful impulses of nature. In the savage state, parents require no more for themselves and their children than what they can easily obtain. The inhabitants of Terra del Fuego, who live at the greatest distance from all culture, find shell-fish and esculent plants sufficient to appease their hunger; never are their thoughts disturbed by care for the maintenance of a child. The black slaves in St. Domingo say, that “it is only the white man who begs;” and indeed in this they are right[1056]. Beggars exist only where they are established by religion and governments which command them to be fed. But the transition from living by one’s own industry to beggary is, in consequence of the shame attending it, most painful and insupportable to those who with the greatest exertion and waste of strength, amidst the privation of every comfort, are exposed with their children to the horrors of famine. On the other hand, to those who, in our states, are obliged to eat the bread of mendicity, children are a blessing; because as long as they are incapable of running alone, they increase their alms by exciting greater compassion, and afterwards by begging in the streets[1057].
It is not therefore poverty already reduced to the state of beggary, but the dread of being at length overwhelmed notwithstanding every exertion to swim against the stream, that occasions child-murder. The same is the effect of slavery, which excludes the possibility of even hoping for a change to a better condition. The serfs of a hard-hearted land-proprietor, who however acted according to the established laws, entered into a resolution to get no children, that they might not be under the necessity of putting any of them to death[1058]. The sense of honour becomes stronger the more the manners approach towards a certain degree of refinement; and it is proved that it is this cause which, in most instances, gives rise to child-murder. In vain have legislators endeavoured to prevent this crime by capital punishment, more cruel than the crime itself. But indeed it is difficult, or rather impossible, to proportion punishment to delinquency or the just degree of guilt.
It needs excite no wonder that many states where the Christian religion was not introduced, and even the Jewish, made no law against child-murder, though the atrocity of it was never denied[1059]. To render this crime less frequent, men fell upon the way of exposing children, in the hope that they might be found by benevolent persons, who would educate and maintain them. Parents imagined that in this manner less violence was offered to humanity, and they could more easily be induced to resign their children to chance than to become their murderers. They consoled themselves with the possibility, proved by various examples, that the exposed children might be saved, and be more fortunate than their parents[1060]. To promote this, they deposited them in places where a great many people might be expected soon to pass, and where the child would consequently be found before it should perish by cold and hunger or be devoured by ravenous animals.
With this view they made choice of the market-places, temples, places where two or more highways met, wells, the banks of rivers or the sea-shore, from which water was brought or which were the usual places of bathing; and even, when the children were placed in the water, means were contrived that they should at any rate float some time without being injured. For this purpose they were placed in small chests, trays, or close baskets, or wrapped up in waterproof bandages[1061]. At Athens children were commonly exposed in that place called cynosarges, which was one of the gymnasia. At Rome the most usual place was that pillar called columna lactaria, which stood in the market where kitchen vegetables were sold[1062].