A worthless woman can never be reduced to that wretched situation, because she is insensible to infamy; but a woman who has that respectable virtue, a high sense of shame, and a strong desire of being respectable in her character, finding herself surrounded by such horrors, often has not strength of mind to meet them, and in despair puts an end to a life which is become insupportable. In that case, can any man, whose heart ever felt what pity is, be _angry_ with the memory of such an unfortunate woman for what she did? She felt life to be so dreadful and oppressive, that she _could not_ longer support it. With that view of her situation, every humane heart will forget the indiscretion or crime, and bleed for the sufferings which a woman must have gone through; who, but for having listened to the perfidious protestations and vows of our sex, might have been an affectionate and faithful wife, a virtuous and honoured mother, through a long and happy life; and probably that very reflection raised the last pang of despair, which hurried her into eternity. To think seriously of what a fellow-creature must feel, at such an awful moment, must melt to pity every man whose heart is not steeled with habits of cruelty; and every woman who does not affect to be more severely virtuous and chaste than perhaps any good woman ever was. It may be said that such a woman's guilt is heightened, when we consider that at the same time that she puts an end to her own life, she murders her child. God forbid that killing should always be murder! It is only murder when it is executed with some degree of cool judgment, and wicked intention. When committed under a phrenzy from despair, can it be more offensive in the sight of God, than under a phrenzy from a fever, or in lunacy? It should therefore, as it must raise our horror, raise our pity too. What is commonly understood to be the murder of a bastard child by the mother, if the real circumstances were fully known, would be allowed to be a very different crime in different circumstances. In some (it is to be hoped _rare_) instances, it is a crime of the very deepest dye: it is a premeditated contrivance for taking away the life of the most inoffensive and most helpless of all human creatures, in opposition not only to the most universal dictates of humanity, but of that powerful instinctive passion which, for a wise and important purpose, the Author of our nature has planted in the breast of every female creature, a wonderful eagerness about the preservation of its young. The most charitable construction that could be put upon so savage an action, and it is to be hoped the fairest often, would be to reckon it the work of phrenzy, or temporary insanity.