The infinitely important service of predisposing the passages, and of obviating difficulties, to be only ascertained by that faculty of touching, is palpably and peculiarly appropriated by Nature to the women only; and it is from them alone that a woman must, naturally and truly speaking, be the least shocked at receiving such service. Whereas in being _touched_ by a man, besides, I once more say, besides the revoltingness of Nature, and the protest of female modesty against it, besides the pain inseparable from it, besides even its insufficiency; the safety of the woman is destroyed to the very foundations, by the negation of due foreknowledge and proper disposal, against the actual crisis of danger or the real labor-pains, the mitigation of which, and facilitating the delivery, depend so much on the _accuracy_ of the _touch_. WHOEVER then will but consider that greater aptitude of organization in the women for fineness of that sense of touching, will allow, that I beg no question, when I aver, proverbially, but truly speaking, that if one hundred points of qualification were requisite to constitute this capital faculty of TOUCHING, a midwife already possesses, in the but being a woman, ninety-nine of them, the sure and certain gift of Nature: and the remaining one from Art, may with great ease, with a little instruction and experience, be acquired. Whereas, the He-midwife, not only, as not being a woman, wants the whole ninety-nine, but can never receive the hundredth at the hands of Art, but in so imperfect a degree, that his trusting it will make it worse to the unfortunate woman that shall trust him, than if he was wholly without it. I might perhaps, not without reason, extend this allegation of the superiority of the female sex over the male in this point, and in the same proportion, to the whole of the manual function, but that I am more afraid of exagerating, than even of falling short of the truth. SURELY then, one might imagine, that the parties principally concerned in liquidating this difference for the government of their decision, on a point of such capital importance, would not do amiss to consider it, before they suffer themselves to be imposed upon in the manner they are by the men-pretenders to a purely female office. An imposition so very gross, that instead of answering the end of those on whom it passes, that of greater safety, only encreases the dreaded danger. And most assuredly, the women who subject themselves to it, do so, if with no scandal to their modesty at least to their understanding; for being sunk to so low a degree of cheapness, as even to purchase, with a sort of prostitution, innocent let it be, it is still a prostitution, after which money is a consideration beneath mention, and to purchase what? danger to their own life, danger to that of the pretious burthen within them, and, at the very least, an increase of bodily pain to themselves.