I HAVE before remarked what I here repeat, and repeat it without the least apprehension of being justly taxed with breach of charity, that a mere sordid view of lucre, of supplementing, in short, deficiencies of success in other professions, was originally the foundation in this country of that novel sect of men-midwives, which we have in our days seen so much multiplied. If any can imagine that the instrumentarians, with their crotchets, their forceps, and the rest of their iron or steel apparatus, had more in view the relief of the distressed females, from the dangers to them in the ignorance of the midwives, than they had their own interest, in the stepping into the place of those they so injuriously decried; if any, I say, can believe that sheer humanity, and not sordid gain, was their view, I can only pity a credulity, that must proceed more from a goodness of the heart, than of the head. But to whoever will deign to consult his own reason, exercised upon facts and the nature of things, may easily satisfy himself, that interest, and interest only, inspired and actuated these intruders into a province so little made for them, of which there can hardly be a stronger presumption than the very recommendation of instruments, of which not one of them but must know the perniciousness, though they make it the capital handle of the introduction of themselves. Not one of them but rails at them, and uses them. Now, as I may safely take it for granted, that interest is at the bottom of this innovation, where that same interest is the principle, it will hardly be denied me, that it is generally speaking the leading or the governing one. It is rarely contented with acting a second part. It often exacts sacrifices, but is rarely itself one. All the actions and procedure of its votaries take the tincture of it. Humanity and all the virtuous or tender passions are either totally excluded, or exist with little or no efficacy in a heart enslaved by interest. In virtue of this reasoning, and I should be much more glad of finding myself mistaken (knowingly I am sure I am not so) than that it should be but too much verified by matter of fact, I shall here submit a case to the reader for his own decision on the probability, and I dare swear, that among the female readers especially, I may chance to have, there will be more than one, who, on her own personal experience, could attest the existence of such a case, or at least has the strongest grounds of presumption of it.