By this interest, with respect to the mis-government of the infants that fall upon the parish, I do not mean such a personal interest, as that the super-intendants of the charity put a single farthing into their own private pockets, out of the savings, by the with-holding or grudging a proper provision for the children, but merely the interest of a parish, or the public, in so false and inhuman an article of parcimony. A consideration which, if that were possible, renders it the more inexcusable from the temptation being so much the less. Footnote 20: I have somewhere read, that brutes have not been insensible of this effect, on suckling animals, though even of so different a kind from their own, that the most mortal enmity naturally existed between them: such was the instance, transmitted from Pensylvania, of a cat so softened towards a rat, by having accidentally given suck to it amongst its own kittens, that it forbore exerting towards it its usual hostility to that species. Footnote 21: The candid reader will please to observe, that in giving up so much as I do of the argument from the prevalence of fashion, I do not give up a little: since I might justly oppose to it the instances of our Royal Family, in which we see so many happily living and florishing monuments of the midwive’s capacity. _Accoucheurs_ had, I presume, no _hand_ in delivering the greatest Lady in this kingdom. The men-midwives will perhaps treat this as trifling. But what will they say to so victorious a proof in favor of the female-practitioners, as that taken from themselves, who, for the most part, were obliged to the midwives for their ushering them into that world, of which they are so much the light and ornament; and out of which world they are rather not so gratefully employed in driving those, by whose function they were helped into it? Footnote 22: Pray remark the following directions for the _choice_ of a midwife, from Dr. Smellie, p. 448.