--’Tis the duplication of one and the same greatness of soul; only what lessened the honour of it, somewhat, in my mother’s case, was, that she could not heroine it into so violent and hazardous an extreme, as one in her situation might have wished, because the old widwife had really some little claim to be depended upon, --as much, at least, as success could give her; having, in the course of her practice of near twenty years in the parish, brought every mother’s son of them into the world without any one slip or accident which could fairly be laid to her account. These facts, tho’ they had their weight, yet did not altogether satisfy some few scruples and uneasinesses which hung upon my father’s spirits in relation to this choice. --To say nothing of the natural workings of humanity and justice--or of the yearnings of parental and connubial love, all which prompted him to leave as little to hazard as possible in a case of this kind; ----he felt himself concerned in a particular manner, that all should go right in the present case; --from the accumulated sorrow he lay open to, should any evil betide his wife and child in lying-in at _Shandy-Hall_. ----He knew the world judged by events, and would add to his afflictions in such a misfortune, by loading him with the whole blame of it. ----“Alas, o’day; --had Mrs. _Shandy_, poor gentlewoman! had but her wish in going up to town just to lye-in and come down again; --which, they say, she begged and prayed for upon her bare knees, ----and which, in my opinion, considering the fortune which Mr. _Shandy_ got with her, --was no such mighty matter to have complied with, the lady and her babe might both of them have been alive at this hour.” This exclamation, my father knew, was unanswerable; --and yet, it was not merely to shelter himself, --nor was it altogether for the care of his offspring and wife that he seemed so extremely anxious about this point; --my father had extensive views of things, ----and stood moreover, as he thought, deeply concerned in it for the publick good, from the dread he entertained of the bad uses an ill-fated instance might be put to. He was very sensible that all political writers upon the subject had unanimously agreed and lamented, from the beginning of Queen _Elizabeth’s_ reign down to his own time, that the current of men and money towards the metropolis, upon one frivolous errand or another, --set in so strong, --as to become dangerous to our civil rights, --though, by the bye, ----a _current_ was not the image he took most delight in, --a _distemper_ was here his favourite metaphor, and he would run it down into a perfect allegory, by maintaining it was identically the same in the body national as in the body natural where the blood and spirits were driven up into the head faster than they could find their ways down; ----a stoppage of circulation must ensue, which was death in both cases.