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 fe