More feeble and helpless than any thing else of living creatures is an infant in the first days of its existence—­unable to minister to its own wants, unable even to make those wants known:  a feeble cry which indicates suffering, but not what or where the pain is, is all it can utter.  But to meet this weakness and incapacity on the part of the infant, God has implanted in the heart of the mother a yearning affection to her offspring, so that she feels this almost inanimate being to be a part of herself, and every cry of pain acts as a dagger to her own heart.

And to humanity alone, of all the tribes of animated beings, has a power been given to nullify this feeling.  Beast, bird, and insect, attend to the wants of their offspring, accordingly as those wants require much or little assiduity.  But woman, if she will, can drug and stupefy this feeling.  She can commit the charge of her child to dependants and servants, and need only to take care that enough is provided to meet that child’s wants, but need not see herself that those wants are actually met.

But a woman who does this is far, very far, from doing her duty.  Who is so fit to watch over the wants of infancy as she who gave that infant birth?  Can a mother suppose, that if she can so stifle those sensibilities which prompt her to provide for the wants of her children, servants and dependants, in whom no such sensibilities exist, will be very solicitous about their charge?  How many of the infant’s cries will be unattended to, which would at once have made their way to the heart of a mother! and, therefore, how many of the child’s wants will in consequence remain uncared for!

No one can understand so well the wants of a child as a mother—­no one is ever so ready to meet those wants as she; and, therefore, to none but a mother, under ordinary circumstances, should the entire charge of a child be committed, And in all countries in which, luxury has not so far attained the ascendency, that in order to partake of its pleasures a mother will desert her offspring, the cares and trials of maternal love are entered upon as the sweetest of enjoyments and the greatest of pleasures.  It was a noble saying of a queen of France, “that none should share with her the privileges of a mother;” and if the same sentiment found its way into every heart, a very different aspect would soon be produced.  How many, through ill-treatment and neglect in childhood, carry the marks to their dying day in weak and sickly constitutions! how many more in a distorted body and crippled limbs!  These are but the too sure consequences of the neglect of a mother, and, consequent upon that, the neglect of servants, who, feeling the child a burden, lessen their own trouble; and many a mother who, perhaps, now that her child has grown up, weeps bitter tears over his infirmities, might have saved his pain and her own sorrow by attending to his wants in infancy.