Shame I take to be more a defect in Nature, and want of Resolution to act in Publick, than to discourage the private Amours of Youth, which by a due management may be easily carried on with sufficient secrecy: And we oftentimes find a bashful Person more inclinable to Vice than the Man of assurance, tho’ he supports the Character with more Hipocrisy; his Intrigues are carried on with an entire secrecy, and he can enter upon his Lewdness with an air of Gravity and Innocence, when the Sinner of Resolution as frankly owns his Experience, as he commits the Crime. But to go on with this Author, in page 17. He says, it is the general Opinion, that the shameless are the worst of People, yet shame when ill plac’d, has often wrought worse Effects, than the reverse alone has been able to produce. When a Bastard Infant is found Dead, and the Mother, lately deliver’d without Witness, is not able to prove either that she had made Provision for it, or during her pregnancy imparted the secret to another, besides the Father, our _English_ Law, without any other Evidence, presumes the Woman to have murder’d the Child. From whence it is evident the Legislators must have suppos’d that some Women may have cruelty enough to commit the most unnatural Murder of all, and at the same time want Courage to bear shame. This penetrating Author does not consider, that ’tis not so much the want of Courage to bear a present shame, as to prevent a future expence in the maintaining and breeding up a Child, which most commonly occasions these unnatural Murders; and where a Crime of this Nature can be perpetrated with secrecy, so that the guilty Persons may come off with impunity, I take it that in all Cases the incumbrance is more consider’d than the shame. I am not of his Opinion in Page 18. that Women are equally immodest with Men, and that Custom and Education only prevents their shewing it. For in the Infancy of Children, before the force of Education can possibly take place, or sense prevail, as a Guide to their Actions, we frequently find an abounding Modesty in the Female, and a large share of Boldness in the Male, produc’d from the same Loins, and this I have observ’d is generally the Case, which can proceed from nothing but Nature.