“and it was expected that they at least would not outrage their own feeling as mothers by consenting to the destruction of their offspring.  Subsequently, however, Colonel Campbell ascertained that these ladies had no female children, and, on being closely questioned, they admitted that at their husbands’ bidding they had destroyed them.”

In the South Sea Islands “not less than two-thirds of the children were murdered by their own parents.”  Ellis (P.R., I., 196-202) knew parents who had, by their own confession, killed four, six, eight, even ten of their children, and the only reason they gave was that it was the custom of the country.

“No sense of irresolution or horror appeared to exist in the bosoms of those parents, who deliberately resolved on the deed before the child was born.”  “The murderous parents often came to their (the missionaries’) houses almost before their hands were cleansed from their children’s blood, and spoke of the deed with worse than brutal insensibility, or with vaunting satisfaction at the triumph of their customs over the persuasions of their teachers.”

They refused to spare babies even when the missionaries offered to take care of them (II., 23).  Neither Ellis, during a residence of eight years, nor Nott during thirty years’ residence on the South Sea Islands, had known a single mother who was not guilty of this crime of infanticide.  Three native women who happened to be together in a room one day confessed that between them they had killed twenty-one infants—­nine, seven, and five respectively.

These facts have long been familiar to students of anthropology, but their true significance has been obscured by the additional information that many tribes addicted to infanticide, nevertheless displayed a good deal of “affection” toward those whom they spared.  A closer examination of the testimony reveals, however, that there is no true affection in these cases, but merely a shallow fondness for the little ones, chiefly for the sake of the selfish gratification it affords the parents to watch their gambols and to give vent to inherited animal instincts.  True affection is revealed only in self-sacrifice; but the disposition to sacrifice themselves for their children is the one quality most lacking in these child-murderers.  Sentimentalists, with their usual lack of insight and logical sense, have endeavored to excuse these assassins on the ground that necessity compelled them to destroy their infants.  Their arguments have misled even so eminent a specialist as Professor E.B.  Tylor into declaring (Anthropology, 427) that “infanticide comes from hardness of life rather than from hardness of heart.”  What he means, may be made clear by reference to the case of the Arabs who, living in a desert country, were in constant dread of suffering from scarcity of food; wherefore, as Robertson Smith remarks (281), “to bury a daughter was regarded