The Almighty, through kindness to his creatures, has so ordered the labours of women, that even the honest part of the Men-midwife tribe confess, that, in thirty years practice, a person might probably never meet _with a single case_ where a good woman might not have done the business. This confession was made to me by an eminent man-midwife, after a practice of thirty-six years. How else would the world have been peopled? The men have _but lately_ come into fashion. In praise of _Scotland_ and _Ireland_ be it spoken, _the women of those countries are still too modest to employ them_. What is the consequence? _Adulteries_ happen _very seldom in those countries_; and every farm-house swarms with strong, healthy, _well-limbed_ children. If Men-midwives were requisite to bring children into the world, what would become of the wilds of America—the plains of Africa? Even the _Hottentot women_ are too modest to employ men—they leave that abandoned custom _to our English ladies_—yet they are so fruitful they furnish slaves to the globe. It is a notorious fact, that more children have been lost since women were so scandalously indecent as to employ men, than for ages before that practice became so general. Women have _a tenderness of feeling for their own sex_ in labour, which _it is impossible men can ever equal them in_. By _having felt_ the pains, and the anxieties attending child-birth, they know how to sympathize in a woman’s sufferings. _Their_ feelings, therefore, are _natural_. They lead them to be patient—they prompt them _to allow nature to do her own_ peculiar work. They never dream of having recourse to force—the _barbarous, bloody crotchet_ never stained _their_ hands with _murder_. There _never really_ can be occasion for a male operator, but when a deed must be done which my soul shudders at the idea of, and which I shall not mention—but thanks to God, such instances do not occur in a century!—To my knowledge, a lady was twice delivered in different parts of the country of England, by common women-midwives, and both those cases were _as unnatural_ and difficult as it is well possible to imagine—she and the children did well—if she had employed men, it is more than probable, _the children, at least_, would have expired under the crotchet—or been maimed by the forceps!