In recent numbers of the _Lancet_ there has been a correspondence on the desirableness, from the doctor’s point of view, of making it compulsory on all women of the humbler classes, on pain of fine or imprisonment, to be attended in childbearing by a male practitioner. One of the correspondents says there is such a provision in the new “Medical Bill,” but on looking through that Bill I cannot find such a provision, unless indeed it be artfully concealed in clause 29. The _Lancet_, it is well known, is ever the friend of compulsion and violent centralization, abounding in such expressions as the following:—“It is to be regretted that a well instructed and humane government does not exercise a firmer influence over the anarchy, the greed, the ignorance of local governing bodies. But the energetic use of the powers given by the Sanitary Acts would enable medical men to confer benefits on the public, the value of which defies estimation.”—_Lancet._ These benefits conferred by medical men, be it observed, are to be purchased at the expense of that power of self-government, disposition to help the law, and manly independence which, as we have seen, De Tocqueville, Montalembert, Niebuhr, Guizot, and a host of thoughtful English writers, have attributed to a great extent to the freedom of local governing bodies. It might be asked further, is there no danger of anarchy, of greed, of ignorance among medical men? Footnote 90: _Liverpool Mercury._ Footnote 91: If we compare the slight penalties inflicted for cruelties practised on women and children with those imposed for injury of property or the wounding of a stag, the property of a Duke, we cannot wonder at the low estimate, in England, of the worth of women. Footnote 92: _Commentaries_, p. 142, chap. viii. Footnote 93: