gotten too, since my parley with him, and that would
have destroyed all the affair.

But it touched my heart so forcibly to think of parting entirely with
the child, and, for aught I knew, of having it murdered, or starved by
neglect and ill-usage (which was much the same), that I could not think
of it without horror. I wish all those women who consent to the
disposing their children out of the way, as it is called, for decency
sake, would consider that 'tis only a contrived method for murder; that
is to say, a-killing their children with safety.

It is manifest to all that understand anything of children, that we are
born into the world helpless, and incapable either to supply our own
wants or so much as make them known; and that without help we must
perish; and this help requires not only an assisting hand, whether of
the mother or somebody else, but there are two things necessary in that
assisting hand, that is, care and skill; without both which, half the
children that are born would die, nay, though they were not to be
denied food; and one half more of those that remained would be cripples
or fools, lose their limbs, and perhaps their sense. I question not
but that these are partly the reasons why affection was placed by
nature in the hearts of mothers to their children; without which they
would never be able to give themselves up, as 'tis necessary they
should, to the care and waking pains needful to the support of their
children.

Since this care is needful to the life of children, to neglect them is
to murder them; again, to give them up to be managed by those people
who have none of that needful affection placed by nature in them, is to
neglect them in the highest degree; nay, in some it goes farther, and
is a neglect in order to their being lost; so that 'tis even an
intentional murder, whether the child lives or dies.

All those things represented themselves to my view, and that is the
blackest and most frightful form: and as I was very free with my
governess, whom I had now learned to call mother, I represented to her
all the dark thoughts which I had upon me about it, and told her what
distress I was in. She seemed graver by much at this part than at the
other; but as she was hardened in these things beyond all possibility
of being touched with the religious part, and the scruples about the
murder, so she was equally impenetrable in that part which related to
affection. She asked me if she had not