I shall not, in answering your queries, attempt to point out minutely what I think to be the fixed laws of human nature for the government of human parentage. I have some things to say to you, and to all who are, or hope to be, husbands, respecting the _crime of an undesigned and an undesired Maternity_. From what I shall say on this subject, it may be that you will get some hints as to the regulation of your passional relations with your wife. You are a husband; you hope to be a father, and to make for yourself, your wife and children, a pure and happy home, where perfect freedom, perfect love and trust shall dwell, and where your entire nature shall expand and be perfected in all purity and nobleness. You would elevate and perfect the nature you bear in yourself and in your children. This you hope to do, not through your relations to Church or State, but through your relations as a husband and father, and by obedience to those laws of Nature which are designed to control your life in those relations. As compared with the question of _the right use of the reproductive element_,—its bearing on the growth, elevation and happiness of your entire being, in this and in all states of your present and future existence,—all questions of wealth, of reputation, of religion, and government, sink into insignificance. Your treatment of your wife in regard to Maternity, and to the relation from which it results, must shape your destiny and hers, at home and abroad. How can you respect yourself, knowing that your disregard of her rights, in reference to this most sacred function, has destroyed all respect for you in the heart of your wife? MATERNITY is the subject under consideration. Ought it ever to exist except at the desire of the woman, and when her nature calls for it? Can it be right for man to impose on her this most sublime and overwhelming of all human responsibilities, when her nature recoils from the burden? She is not prepared to take charge of the germ of a new life, and to meet the suffering and the responsibility of developing and giving birth to a child, if her body and soul shrink from it. Under such circumstances, can it be right for man to urge on her a suffering and responsibility so much dreaded, or subject her to the possibility of a maternity against which her soul so earnestly protests?