Page:Essay on Crimes and Punishments (1775).djvu/195

 the difficulty of providing for her infant is a great additional misfortune.

Her second fault is more criminal. She abandons the fruit of her weakness, and exposes it to perish.

But, because a child is dead, is it absolutely necessary to kill the mother? She did not kill the child. She flattered herself, that some passenger would have compassion on the innocent babe. It is even possible that she might intend to return and provide for it; a sentiment so natural in the breast of a mother, that it ought to be presumed. The law in the country of which I am speaking is, indeed, positively against her. But is it not an unjust, inhuman, and pernicious law? Unjust, because it makes no distinction between her who murders, and her who abandons her infant; inhuman, because it punishes with death a too great desire of concealing a weakness; pernicious, because it deprives the state of a fruitful subject, in a country that wants inhabitants.