ard their last and most serious reflections, when they were
certain they had but a few hours to live.

That knowledge of women has enabled me to say, though no doubt there
will be many exceptions to the general rule, that women who are pregnant
without daring to avow their situation, are commonly objects of the
greatest _compassion_; and generally are less criminal than the world
imagine. In most of these cases the father of the child is really
criminal, often cruelly so; the mother is weak, credulous, and deluded.
Having obtained gratification, he thinks no more of his promises; she
finds herself abused, disappointed of his affection, attention, and
support, and left to struggle as she can, with sickness, pains, poverty,
infamy; in short, with compleat _ruin_ for _life_!

A worthless woman can never be reduced to that wretched situation,
because she is insensible to infamy; but a woman who has that
respectable virtue, a high sense of shame, and a strong desire of being
respectable in her character, finding herself surrounded by such
horrors, often has not strength of mind to meet them, and in despair
puts an end to a life which is become insupportable. In that case, can
any man, whose heart ever felt what pity is, be _angry_ with the memory
of such an unfortunate woman for what she did? She felt life to be so
dreadful and oppressive, that she _could not_ longer support it. With
that view of her situation, every humane heart will forget the
indiscretion or crime, and bleed for the sufferings which a woman must
have gone through; who, but for having listened to the perfidious
protestations and vows of our sex, might have been an affectionate and
faithful wife, a virtuous and honoured mother, through a long and happy
life; and probably that very reflection raised the last pang of despair,
which hurried her into eternity. To think seriously of what a
fellow-creature must feel, at such an awful moment, must melt to pity
every man whose heart is not steeled with habits of cruelty; and every
woman who does not affect to be more severely virtuous and chaste than
perhaps any good woman ever was.

It may be said that such a woman's guilt is heightened, when we consider
that at the same time that she puts an end to her own life, she murders
her child. God forbid that killing should always be murder! It is only
murder when it is executed with some degree of cool judgment, and wicked
intention. When committed under a phrenzy from