ous
an extreme, as one in her situation might have wished, because the old
midwife had really some little claim to be depended upon,--as much, at
least, as success could give her; having, in the course of her practice
of near twenty years in the parish, brought every mother's son of them
into the world without any one slip or accident which could fairly be
laid to her account.

These facts, tho' they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy
some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father's spirits
in relation to this choice.--To say nothing of the natural workings
of humanity and justice--or of the yearnings of parental and connubial
love, all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible in
a case of this kind;--he felt himself concerned in a particular manner,
that all should go right in the present case;--from the accumulated
sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his wife and child in
lying-in at Shandy-Hall.--He knew the world judged by events, and would
add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by loading him with the
whole blame of it.--'Alas o'day;--had Mrs. Shandy, poor gentlewoman!
had but her wish in going up to town just to lye-in and come down
again;--which they say, she begged and prayed for upon her bare
knees,--and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune which Mr.
Shandy got with her,--was no such mighty matter to have complied with,
the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this hour.'

This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable;--and yet, it was not
merely to shelter himself,--nor was it altogether for the care of
his offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this
point;--my father had extensive views of things,--and stood moreover, as
he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread
he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to.

He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had
unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen Elizabeth's
reign down to his own time, that the current of men and money towards
the metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another,--set in so
strong,--as to become dangerous to our civil rights,--though, by the
bye,--a current was not the image he took most delight in,--a distemper
was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run it down into a
perfect allegory, by maintaining it was identically the s