BUT as to this profession of midwifery, even the total extinction of the real midwives, would not be perhaps so bad as giving that name to those poor creatures in training under the men-practitioners, who independently of their own incapacity of practice, consequently of forming good practitioners, have a palpable interest not to suffer their women-pupils to gain any eminence in the profession that might give umbrage to themselves[22]. The midwives whom these men-practitioners would perhaps gratiously allow to subsist, might to their own insufficiency add the dangerous circumstance of creating, or at least of not preventing, by duly exerting themselves in the predisposing part, the necessity of calling in their protectors, especially where recommended by them. Not that I imagine even these mock-midwives would wilfully be guilty of such prevarication in their duty. For them not to deserve such a suspicion, it is enough that they are women, consequently tender-hearted. But that does not exclude the idea of weakness. But where so fair a virtue as gratitude may disguise even from themselves the fouler motive of interest lurking at bottom, if that tenderness is not even destroyed, it may not impossibly be made a tool of, and join in persuading them, that things had really better be left to the men-practitioners, whose creatures and devotees they are. Thence a negligence superadded to their defect of skill. Such subalterns then would, at least, not be dis-inclined to the “FINDING” _themselves_ “AT A LOSS”, or yet worse for the patient, have by their omissions, if not commissions, bred the occasion of “_finding_” themselves “_at that loss_”, even mechanically, and without the direct design of paying their court to their recommending “_accoucheur_, _their man of honor_ and _real friend_,” in a _candid_ recourse to him. Pity it were indeed that so charming a harmony should not subsist between _the accoucheurs_ and such _midwives_, for the “MUTUAL ADVANTAGE” of both! A harmony, which however could hardly be established but at the expence of the sacrificed patients.