Illa verecundis lux est præbenda puellis, Qua timidus latebras sperat habere pudor. People of substance may sin without being exposed for their stolen pleasure; but servants, and the poorer sort of women, have seldom the opportunity of concealing a big belly, or at least the consequences of it. It is impossible that an unfortunate girl of good parentage may be left destitute, and know no shift for a livelihood than to become a nursery, or a chambermaid: she may be diligent, faithful, and obliging, have abundance of modesty, and if you will, be religious: she may resist temptations, and preserve her chastity for years together, and yet at last meet with an unhappy moment in which she gives up her honour to a powerful deceiver, who afterwards neglects her. If she proves with child, her sorrows are unspeakable, and she cannot be reconciled with the wretchedness of her condition; the fear of shame attacks her so lively, that every thought distracts her. All the family she lives in have a great opinion of her virtue, and her last mistress took her for a saint. How will her enemies, that envied her character, rejoice! How will her relations detest her! The more modest she is now, and the more violently the dread of coming to shame hurries her away, the more wicked and more cruel her resolutions will be, either against herself or what she bears. It is commonly imagined, that she who can destroy her child, her own flesh and blood, must have a vast stock of barbarity, and be a savage monster, different from other women; but this is likewise a mistake, which we commit for the want of understanding nature and the force of passions. The same woman that murders her bastard in the most execrable manner, if she is married afterwards, may take care of, cherish, and feel all the tenderness for her infant that the fondest mother can be capable of. All mothers naturally love their children: but as this is a passion, and all passions centre in self-love, so it may be subdued by any superior passion, to sooth that same self-love, which if nothing had intervened, would have bid her fondle her offspring. Common whores, whom all the world knows to be such, hardly ever destroy their children; nay, even those who assist in robberies and murders seldom are guilty of this crime; not because they are less cruel or more virtuous, but because they have lost their modesty to a greater degree, and the fear of shame makes hardly any impression upon them.