rimes to be _impossible_. But if the girl was criminal; if death, or a
life of remorse, was her due, what was the due of her parents, and
especially of the mother! And what was the due of the _father_, who
suffered that mother, and who, perhaps, tempted her to neglect her most
sacred duty!

270. If this poor child had been deprived of its mental faculties,
instead of being deprived of its life, the cause would, in all
likelihood, never have been discovered. The insanity would have been
ascribed to '_brain-fever_,' or to some other of the usual causes of
insanity; or, as in thousands upon thousands of instances, to some
unaccountable cause. When I was, in No. IX., paragraphs from 227 to 233,
both inclusive, maintaining with all my might, the unalienable right of
the child to the milk of its mother, I omitted, amongst the evils
arising from banishing the child from the mother's breast, to mention,
or, rather, it had never occurred to me to mention, the _loss of reason_
to the poor, innocent creatures, thus banished. And now, as connected
with this measure, I have an argument of _experience_, enough to terrify
every young man and woman upon earth from the thought of committing this
offence against nature. I wrote No. IX. at CAMBRIDGE, on Sunday, the
28th of March; and before I quitted SHREWSBURY, on the 14th of May, the
following facts reached my ears. A very respectable tradesman, who, with
his wife, have led a most industrious life, in a town that it is not
necessary to name, said to a gentleman that told it to me: 'I wish to
God I had read No. IX. of Mr. Cobbett's ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN fifteen
years ago!' He then related, that he had had ten children, _all put out
to be suckled_, in consequence of the necessity of his having the
mother's assistance to carry on his business; and that _two out of the
ten_ had come home _ideots_; though the rest were all sane, and though
insanity had never been known in the family of either father or mother!
These parents, whom I myself saw, are very clever people, and the wife
singularly industrious and expert in her affairs.

271. Now the _motive_, in this case, unquestionably was good; it was
that the mother's valuable time might, as much as possible, be devoted
to the earning of a competence for her children. But, alas! what is this
competence to these two unfortunate beings! And what is the competence
to the rest, when put in the scale against the mortification that they
must, all thei