I AM not writing here for Italians or Spaniards, or any of the inhabitants of those countries who are so prone to jealousy, perhaps because they know their women. I am now addressing myself to Englishmen, not jealous, because, if they know theirs, they must know that, in proportion to the number, no women on the earth have more of the reality of virtue and modesty. I will not suppose then any thing so offensive, as that the chastity of the generality of them is not infinitely superior to the advantages or overtures for design afforded the men admitted to such a privacy, as that of attending them in their lying-in and delivering them. But would the honestest woman, or one however sure of herself or of her virtue, think it eligible, without a full satisfactory proof of that superior safety, which is her object in preferring men-midwives, to be herself the occasion of temptation to those people? How can she answer that she will not be it? In that so formidable army of mercenaries, actually continuing to form itself under the banners of Fashion, and headed by Interest, can she answer that the insensible stoics of it, will fall to her share? Would a woman, I will not say, of strict principles of honor, but barely of not the most abandoned ones, submit herself in the manner she must to a man-midwife, on her employing him, if she would but satisfy herself, as she easily may, that his aid cannot be more effectual than that of a woman? But what! if it is most undoubtedly a less safe one? BUT this is far from all to be objected on the head of modesty to this practice. The opportunities, if not of temptation, if not of seduction by it, at least of offensiveness to female reserve are such, as would make even a husband, the least susceptible of jealousy, so uneasy for the outrages to which the employing of a man-midwife in the course of his wife’s pregnancy and delivery might expose her, as would make him think it no indifferent point for his judgment to settle whether such outrages might not better be spared her. It will not I presume be denied, that all female modesty is a flower, the delicacy of which cannot be too much guarded against any tendency to blast it, and that nothing can threaten more that effect, than such infringements of the unity of a husband’s privilege in the sole incommunicable possession of his wife’s body, as are implied in the course of a man-midwife’s attendance. An unity of privilege, which, when broke in one point, does not always stop at that, but may proceed to farther breach, where there is art on one side, and weakness on the other. Many women are doubtless proof against the slipperiness of such an overture: but all have not alike strength of mind.