“Here,” says Curtius, “they do not acknowledge and rear children according to the will of the parents, but as the officers entrusted with the medical inspection of infants may direct, for if they have remarked anything deformed or defective in the limbs of a child they order it to be killed. In contracting marriages they do not seek an alliance with high birth, but make their choice by the looks, for beauty in the children is a quality highly appreciated.”[178] “These,” said Diodorus Siculus, “were governed by laws in the highest degree salutary, for while in other respects their political system was one to admire, beauty was held among them in the highest estimation. For this reason a discrimination between the children born to them is made at the stage of infancy, when those that are perfect in their limbs and features, and have constitutions which promise a combination of strength and beauty, are allowed to be reared, while those that have any bodily defect are condemned to be destroyed as not worth rearing. They make their marriages also in accordance with this principle, for in selecting a bride they care nothing whether she has a dowry and a handsome fortune besides, but look only to her beauty and other advantages of the outward person.”[179] “A very singular usage,” says Strabo, “is related of the high estimation in which the inhabitants of Cathaie hold the quality of beauty, which they extend to horses and dogs. According to Onesicritus, they elect the handsomest person as king. The child [selected], two months after birth, undergoes a public inspection, and is examined. They determine whether it has the amount of beauty required by law, and whether it is worthy to be permitted to live. The presiding magistrate then pronounces whether it is to be allowed to live, or whether it is to be put to death.”[180] As far as I have been able to discover, the first attempt made by the British Government and perhaps the first organized effort in the Eastern world to put an end to the murder of female children was in 1789 when the British resident officer of Benares, Jonathan Duncan, afterwards Governor of Bombay, authenticated from the confessions of a race called the Rajekoomars the existence of the custom. Sir John Shore, afterwards a witness in the trial of Warren Hastings, and later Lord Teignmouth, in an address to the Royal Society of Bengal in 1794 described how, after many suggestions, it was decided that the only way that the Rajekoomars could be moved was by getting them to sign an “engagement” binding them to desist “in future from the barbarous practice of causing the death of their female children.” Inasmuch as that engagement was the beginning of the work in India and was afterwards used as a model for other engagements and reveals a curious attitude of mind on both sides, I reprint it in full: