all the nations of Europe, bore sad testimony to the mistake that had been made. What was that mistake? The nature of man is so prone to evil that a strong restraint is required to keep down his bad passions, and subdue his vicious inclinations. He requires, likewise, some special incentive to good. The legislators of antiquity sought that restraint upon evil, and that incentive to good, in powerful institutions guarded by sanctity of manners. It was thus that Sparta and Rome were led to virtue. But these institutions perished when manners no longer supported them."--_Lord John Russell._ Lecture delivered at Exeter Hall, on the Obstacles which have retarded Moral and Political Progress, November, 1855. [51] "I know that our philosophy, always abounding in singular maxims, pretends, contrary to the experience of all ages, that luxury forms the glory of states; but after having forgotten the necessity of sumptuary laws, will she yet dare to deny that good manners are essential to the duration of empires, and that luxury is diametrically opposed to good manners?"--_Rousseau Discours_, p. 67. [52] "It was (says M. Astruc) at the first delivery of Mademoiselle de la Valliere, and for the safer keeping of the secret. It was feared that the presence of a midwife in the palace, where suspicion reigned already, would furnish fresh food for the malign curiosity of the courtiers; to impose on them they made use of a surgeon whose practice attached him to the court. For the rest, it cannot be denied that there have been, in every age, men who studied or taught the art of midwifery. We have treatises on midwifery of very ancient date, written by physicians. Surgeons, while exercising themselves in other surgical operations, did not neglect that of midwifery. But the habitual and daily custom of delivery was never established as it is at present; they interfered only in difficult cases, where it was believed that an experienced operator was required." [53] There is a work of M. Hecquet, entitled _De l' Indecence qu'il y a aux Hommes d'accoucher les Femmes_. [54] "There are, nevertheless, women, even now, whom it would be impossible to induce to be delivered by men. We speak not of those localities where this employment is confided to women, but in towns, where men-midwives are more in vogue. There is, it is said, a great Queen in Europe who has an accoucheur of whom she never makes use. Women deliver her, and the _man-midwife_ is in the ante-chamber, as a witness of the tribute yet paid to a custom which had been renounced." We fear that, in these "days of advance," even Majesty itself has succumbed to the prevailing fashion. [55] "Sisters of Charity," page 75.