ng's
child. He does know; for he must know, that she _has_ a child, and that
he is a principal in robbing it of the means of life. He does not cast
it off and leave it to perish himself, but he causes the thing to be
done; and to all intents and purposes, he is a principal in the cruel
and cowardly crime.

233. And if an argument could possibly be yet wanting to the husband; if
his feelings were so stiff as still to remain unmoved, must not the wife
be aware that whatever _face_ the world may put upon it, however custom
may seem to bear her out; must she not be aware that every one must see
the main _motive_ which induces her to banish from her arms that which
has formed part of her own body? All the pretences about her sore
breasts and her want of strength are vain: nature says that she is to
endure the pains as well as the pleasures: whoever has heard the
bleating of the ewe for her lamb, and has seen her _reconciled_, or at
least pacified, by having presented to her the skin or some of the blood
of her _dead_ lamb: whoever has witnessed the difficulty of inducing
either ewe or cow to give her milk to an alien young one: whoever has
seen the valour of the timid hen in defending her brood, and has
observed that she never swallows a morsel that is fit for her young,
until they be amply satisfied: whoever has seen the wild birds, though,
at other times, shunning even the distant approach of man, flying and
screaming round his head, and exposing themselves to almost certain
death in defence of their nests: whoever has seen these things, or any
one of them, must question the _motive_ that can induce a mother to
banish a child from her own breast to that of one who has already been
so unnatural as to banish hers. And, in seeking for a motive
_sufficiently powerful_ to lead to such an act, women must excuse men,
if they be not satisfied with the ordinary pretences; they must excuse
_me_, at any rate, if I do not stop even at love of ease and want of
maternal affection, and if I express my fear, that, superadded to the
unjustifiable motives, there is one which is calculated to excite
disgust; namely, a desire to be quickly freed from that restraint which
the child imposes, and to _hasten back_, unbridled and undisfigured, to
those enjoyments, to have an eagerness for which, or to wish to excite a
desire for which, a really delicate woman will shudder at the thought of
being suspected.

234. I am well aware of the hostility