Advice to Young Men / And (Incidentally) to Young Women in the Middle and Higher Ranks of Life. In a Series of Letters, Addressed to a Youth, a Bachelor, a Lover, a Husband, a Father, a Citizen, or a Subject.

by William Cobbett

235. We are apt to talk in a very unceremonious style of our rude ancestors, of their gross habits, their want of delicacy in their language. No man shall ever make me believe, that those, who reared the cathedral of ELY (which I saw the other day), were rude, either in their manners or in their minds and words. No man shall make me believe, that our ancestors were a rude and beggarly race, when I read in an act of parliament, passed in the reign of Edward the Fourth, regulating the dresses of the different ranks of the people, and forbidding the LABOURERS to wear coats of cloth that cost more than two shillings a yard (equal to forty shillings of our present money), and forbidding their wives and daughters to wear sashes, or girdles, trimmed with gold or silver. No man shall make me believe that this was a rude and beggarly race, compared with those who now shirk and shiver about in canvass frocks and rotten cottons. Nor shall any man persuade me that that was a rude and beggarly state of things, in which (reign of Edward the Third) an act was passed regulating the wages of labour, and ordering that a woman, for weeding in the corn, should receive a penny a day, while a quart of red wine was sold for a penny, and a pair of men's shoes for two-pence. No man shall make me believe that agriculture was in a rude state, when an act like this was passed, or that our ancestors of that day were rude in their minds, or in their thoughts. Indeed, there are a thousand proofs, that, whether in regard to domestic or foreign affairs, whether in regard to internal freedom and happiness, or to weight in the world, England was at her zenith about the reign of Edward the Third. The Reformation, as it is called, gave her a complete pull down. She revived again in the reigns of the Stuarts, as far as related to internal affairs; but the 'Glorious Revolution' and its debt and its taxes, have, amidst the false glare of new palaces, roads, and canals, brought her down until she is become the land of domestic misery and of foreign impotence and contempt; and, until she, amidst all her boasted improvements and refinements, tremblingly awaits her fall.

236. However, to return from this digression, rude and unrefined as our mothers might be, plain and unvarnished as they might be in their language, accustomed as they might be to call things by their names, though they were not so very delicate as to use the word small-clothes; and to be quite unable, in speaking of horn-cattle, horses, sheep, the canine race, and poultry, to designate them by their sexual appellations; though they might not absolutely faint at hearing these appellations used by others; rude and unrefined and indelicate as they might be, they did not suffer, in the cases alluded to, the approaches of men, which approaches are unceremoniously suffered, and even sought, by their polished and refined and delicate daughters; and of unmarried men too, in many cases; and of very young men.

237. From all antiquity this office was allotted to woman. Moses's life was saved by the humanity of the Egyptian midwife; and to the employment of females in this memorable case, the world is probably indebted for that which has been left it by that greatest of all law-givers, whose institutes, rude as they were, have been the foundation of all the wisest and most just laws in all the countries of Europe and America. It was the fellow feeling of the midwife for the poor mother that saved Moses. And none but a mother can, in such cases, feel to the full and effectual extent that which the operator ought to feel. She has been in the same state herself; she knows more about the matter, except in cases of very rare occurrence, than any man, however great his learning and experience, can ever know. She knows all the previous symptoms; she can judge more correctly than man can judge in such a case; she can put questions to the party, which a man cannot put; the communication between the two is wholly without reserve; the person of the one is given up to the other, as completely as her own is under her command. This never can be the case with a man-operator; for, after all that can be said or done, the native feeling of women, in whatever rank of life, will, in these cases, restrain them from saying and doing, before a man, even before a husband, many things which they ought to say and do. So that, perhaps, even with regard to the bare question of comparative safety to life, the midwife is the preferable person.

238. But safety to life is not ALL. The preservation of life is not to be preferred to EVERY THING. Ought not a man to prefer death to the commission of treason against his country? Ought not a man to die, rather than save his life by the prostitution of his wife to a tyrant, who insists upon the one or the other? Every man and every woman will answer in the affirmative to both these questions. There are, then, cases where people ought to submit to certain death. Surely, then, the mere chance, the mere possibility of it, ought not to outweigh the mighty considerations on the other side; ought not to overcome that inborn modesty, that sacred reserve as to their persons, which, as I said before, is the charm of charms of the female sex, and which our mothers, rude as they are called by us, took, we may be satisfied, the best and most effectual means of preserving.

239. But is there, after all, any thing real in this greater security for the life of either mother or child? If, then, risk were so great as to call upon women to overcome this natural repugnance to suffer the approaches of a man, that risk must be general; it must apply to all women; and, further, it must, ever since the creation of man, always have so applied. Now, resorting to the employment of men-operators has not been in vogue in Europe more than about seventy years, and has not been general in England more than about thirty or forty years. So that the risk in employing midwives must, of late years, have become vastly greater than it was even when I was a boy, or the whole race must have been extinguished long ago. And, then, how puzzled we should be to account for the building of all the cathedrals, and all the churches, and the draining of all the marshes, and all the fens, more than a thousand years before the word 'accoucheur' ever came from the lips of woman, and before the thought came into her mind? And here, even in the use of this word, we have a specimen of the refined delicacy of the present age; here we have, varnish the matter over how we may, modesty in the word and grossness in the thought. Farmers' wives, daughters, and maids, cannot now allude to, or hear named, without blushing, those affairs of the homestead, which they, within my memory, used to talk about as freely as of milking or spinning; but, have they become more really modest than their mothers were? Has this refinement made them more continent than those rude mothers? A jury at Westminster gave, about six years ago, damages to a man, calling himself a gentleman, against a farmer, because the latter, for the purpose for which such animals are kept, had a bull in his yard, on which the windows of the gentleman looked! The plaintiff alleged, that this was so offensive to his wife and daughters, that, if the defendant were not compelled to desist, he should be obliged to brick up his windows, or to quit the house! If I had been the father of these, at once, delicate and curious daughters, I would not have been the herald of their purity of mind; and if I had been the suitor of one of them, I would have taken care to give up the suit with all convenient speed; for how could I reasonably have hoped ever to be able to prevail on delicacy, so exquisite, to commit itself to a pair of bridal sheets? In spite, however, of all this 'refinement in the human mind,' which is everlastingly dinned in our ears; in spite of the 'small-clothes,' and of all the other affected stuff, we have this conclusion, this indubitable proof, of the falling off in real delicacy; namely, that common prostitutes, formerly unknown, now swarm in our towns, and are seldom wanting even in our villages; and where there was one illegitimate child (including those coming before the time) only fifty years ago, there are now twenty.

240. And who can say how far the employment of men, in the cases alluded to, may have assisted in producing this change, so disgraceful to the present age, and so injurious to the female sex? The prostitution and the swarms of illegitimate children have a natural and inevitable tendency to lessen that respect, and that kind and indulgent feeling, which is due from all men to virtuous women. It is well known that the unworthy members of any profession, calling, or rank in life, cause, by their acts, the whole body to sink in the general esteem; it is well known, that the habitual dishonesty of merchants trading abroad, the habitual profligate behaviour of travellers from home, the frequent proofs of abject submission to tyrants; it is well known, that these may give the character of dishonesty, profligacy, or cowardice, to a whole nation. There are, doubtless, many men in Switzerland, who abhor the infamous practices of men selling themselves, by whole regiments, to fight for any foreign state that will pay them, no matter in what cause, and no matter whether against their own parents or brethren; but the censure falls upon the whole nation: and 'no money, no Swiss,' is a proverb throughout the world. It is, amidst those scenes of prostitution and bastardy, impossible for men in general to respect the female sex to the degree that they formerly did; while numbers will be apt to adopt the unjust sentiment of the old bachelor, POPE, that 'every woman is, at heart, a rake.'

241. Who knows, I say, in what degree the employment of men-operators may have tended to produce this change, so injurious to the female sex? Aye, and to encourage unfeeling and brutal men to propose that the dead bodies of females, if poor, should be sold for the purpose of exhibition and dissection before an audience of men; a proposition that our 'rude ancestors' would have answered, not by words, but by blows! Alas! our women may talk of 'small-clothes' as long as they please; they may blush to scarlet at hearing animals designated by their sexual appellations; it may, to give the world a proof of our excessive modesty and delicacy, even pass a law (indeed we have done it) to punish 'an exposure of the person'; but as long as our streets swarm with prostitutes, our asylums and private houses with bastards; as long as we have man-operators in the delicate cases alluded to, and as long as the exhibiting of the dead body of a virtuous female before an audience of men shall not be punished by the law, and even with death; as long as we shall appear to be satisfied in this state of things, it becomes us, at any rate, to be silent about purity of mind, improvement of manners, and an increase of refinement and delicacy.

242. This practice has brought the 'doctor' into every family in the kingdom, which is of itself no small evil. I am not thinking of the expense; for, in cases like these, nothing in that way ought to be spared. If necessary to the safety of his wife, a man ought not only to part with his last shilling, but to pledge his future labour. But we all know that there are imaginary ailments, many of which are absolutely created by the habit of talking with or about the 'doctor.' Read the 'DOMESTIC MEDICINE,' and by the time that you have done, you will imagine that you have, at times, all the diseases of which it treats. This practice has added to, has doubled, aye, has augmented, I verily believe, ten-fold the number of the gentlemen who are, in common parlance, called 'doctors'; at which, indeed, I, on my own private account, ought to rejoice; for, invariably I have, even in the worst of times, found them every where amongst my staunchest and kindest friends. But though these gentlemen are not to blame for this, any more than attorneys are for their increase in number; and amongst these gentlemen, too, I have, with very few exceptions, always found sensible men and zealous friends; though the parties pursuing these professions are not to blame; though the increase of attorneys has arisen from the endless number and the complexity of the laws, and from the ten-fold mass of crimes caused by poverty arising from oppressive taxation; and though the increase of 'doctors' has arisen from the diseases and the imaginary ailments arising from that effeminate luxury which has been created by the drawing of wealth from the many, and giving it to the few; and, as the lower classes will always endeavour to imitate the higher, so the 'accoucheur' has, along with the 'small-clothes,' descended from the loan-monger's palace down to the hovel of the pauper, there to take his fee out of the poor-rates; though these parties are not to blame, the thing is not less an evil. Both professions have lost in character, in proportion to the increase in the number of its members; peaches, if they grew on hedges, would rank but little above the berries of the bramble.

243. But to return once more to the matter of risk of life; can it be that nature has so ordered it, that, as a general thing, the life of either mother or child shall be in danger, even if there were no attendant at all? Can this be? Certainly it cannot: safety must be the rule, and danger the exception; this must be the case, or the world never could have been peopled; and, perhaps, in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, if nature were left wholly to herself, all would be right. The great doctor in these cases, is, comforting, consoling, cheering up. And who can perform this office like women? who have for these occasions a language and sentiments which seem to have been invented for the purpose; and be they what they may as to general demeanour and character, they have all, upon these occasions, one common feeling, and that so amiable, so excellent, as to admit of no adequate description. They completely forget, for the time, all rivalships, all squabbles, all animosities, all hatred even; every one feels as if it were her own particular concern.

244. These, we may be well assured, are the proper attendants on these occasions; the mother, the aunt, the sister, the cousin, and female neighbour; these are the suitable attendants, having some experienced woman to afford extraordinary aid, if such be necessary; and in the few cases where the preservation of life demands the surgeon's skill, he is always at hand. The contrary practice, which we got from the French, is not, however, so general in France as in England. We have outstripped all the world in this, as we have in every thing which proceeds from luxury and effeminacy on the one hand, and from poverty on the other; the millions have been stripped of their means to heap wealth on the thousands, and have been corrupted in manners, as well as in morals, by vicious examples set them by the possessors of that wealth. As reason says that the practice of which I complain cannot be cured without a total change in society, it would be presumption in me to expect such cure from any efforts of mine. I therefore must content myself with hoping that such change will come, and with declaring, that if I had to live my life over again, I would act upon the opinions which I have thought it my bounden duty here to state and endeavour to maintain.