SOURCE: Orr, Bridget. “‘Stifling Pity in a Parent's Breast’: Infanticide and Savagery in Late Eighteenth-Century Travel Writing.” In Travel Writing and Empire: Postcolonial Theory in Transit, edited by Steve Clark, pp. 131-46. London: Zed Books, 1999.

In the following essay, Orr argues that eighteenth-century Scottish travel writers often compelled British women to accept maternal roles by exaggerating the degradation of those who practiced infanticide in foreign lands.

The following Inquiry is intended to illustrate the natural history of mankind in several important articles. This is attempted, by pointing out the most obvious and common improvements, which gradually arise in the state of society, and by showing the influence of these upon the manners, the laws and the Government of a people.

With regard to the facts made use of in the following discourse, the reader, who is conversant with history, will readily perceive the difficulty of obtaining proper materials...