232.  And besides all these considerations, is there no crime in robbing the child of the nurse, and in exposing it to perish?  It will not do to say that the child of the nurse may be dead, and thereby leave her breast for the use of some other.  Such cases must happen too seldom to be at all relied on; and, indeed, every one must see, that, generally speaking, there must be a child cast off for every one that is put to a hireling breast.  Now, without supposing it possible, that the hireling will, in any case, contrive to get rid of her own child, every man who employs such hireling, must know, that he is exposing such child to destruction; that he is assisting to rob it of the means of life; and, of course, assisting to procure its death, as completely as a man can, in any case, assist in causing death by starvation; a consideration which will make every just man in the world recoil at the thought of employing a hireling breast.  For he is not to think of pacifying his conscience by saying, that he knows nothing about the hireling’s child.  He does know; for he must know, that she has a child, and that he is a principal in robbing it of the means of life.  He does not cast it off and leave it to perish himself, but he causes the thing to be done; and to all intents and purposes, he is a principal in the cruel and cowardly crime.

233.  And if an argument could possibly be yet wanting to the husband; if his feelings were so stiff as still to remain unmoved, must not the wife be aware that whatever face the world may put upon it, however custom may seem to bear her out; must she not be aware that every one must see the main motive which induces her to banish from her arms that which has formed part of her own body?  All the pretences about her sore breasts and her want of strength are vain:  nature says that she is to endure the pains as well as the pleasures:  whoever has heard the bleating of the ewe for her lamb, and has seen her reconciled, or at least pacified, by having presented to her the skin or some of the blood of her dead lamb:  whoever has witnessed the difficulty of inducing either ewe or cow to give her milk to an alien young one:  whoever has seen the valour of the timid hen in defending her brood, and has observed that she never swallows a morsel that is fit for her young, until they be amply satisfied:  whoever has seen the wild birds, though, at other times, shunning even the distant approach of man, flying and screaming round his head, and exposing themselves to almost certain death in defence of their nests:  whoever has seen these things, or any one of them, must question the motive that can induce a mother to banish a child from her own breast to that of one who has already been so unnatural as to banish hers.  And, in seeking for a motive sufficiently powerful to lead to such an act, women must excuse men, if they be not satisfied with the ordinary pretences;