INFANTICIDE

 BY LADY COOK ( NEE TENNESSEE C. CLAFLIN)

The death of a little child appeals to our tenderest sympathies. its delicate mute face, and clasped hands fill us with infinite pity. We fight against the fell diseases which blast these sweetest buds of our race, and crush the parents' fondest hopes. It may be our minds go back to Bethlehem, with its smiling babe lying upon Mary's breast. Other infants also, "from two years old and under," hang from the bosoms or play about the knees of other mothers. Suddenly the quiet Judaean village is a scene of infantile slaughter. Swarthy warriors convert it into the shambles of innocence, and the mothers are bathed with their children's blood. The Church commemorates this event on "The Innocents' Day." For ages poets have sung it, and painters depicted it. Yet two hundred little ones perished on that memorable occasion. There is a far larger number— thousands for hundreds — annually done to death in this country, more foully murdered than those, but neither Church, nor poet, nor painter, immortalises their innocent sufferings. Instead of Pagan soldiery butchering Jewish children, Christian mothers slaughter their own babes. Those did it at the command of the Prince, in order to save his throne. These perform it themselves, usually from shame, from fear, from broken hearts. And we are so well-bred, from the Archbishop down, that we keep our prayers and our wailings for the small Bethlehemite massacre nineteen hundred years ago, and discreetly pass by our own English "Innocents" to-day without a word or a tear.

 Week after week our coroners point out the national infamy of these murders, but no one heedeth. Day after day adds to the number of the ghastly roll. Can nothing be done to stay them, or are these also among the things which must not be enquired into ? There must be something fundamentally wrong when so many mothers are impelled to outrage the natural instincts of maternity. That feeling, which governs alike the incubation of the lowly earwig and the stately pheasant ; which throbs the same in the breast of the little mouse-mother or the high-born patron — that universal impulse which conserves the family, the species, the race—cannot be diverted except by some great mental or moral catastrophe unless our moral sentiments and our laws also operate against it. There are two forms of infanticide — one before birth and the other after. Both have been almost universally practised from the earliest times, and both are common, in foreign countries and in England to-day. Speaking of the former, Mr Lecky, in his "History of European Morals," tells us that "A long chain of writers, both Pagan and Christian, represent the practice as avowed and almost universal. They describe it as resulting, not simply from licentiousness or from poverty, but even from so slight a motive as vanity, which made mothers shrink from the disfigurement of childbirth. They speak of a mother who had never destroyed her unborn offering as deserving of signal praise, and they assure that the frequency of the crime was such that it gave rise to a regular profession." We have amongst us similar licentiousness and poverty, married women — many of high degree — similarly vain, and a sufficient number of medical men and midwives employed in this practice to constitute it a profession.

 It would seem strange that so abhorrent a custom should have largely depended upon a metaphysical subtlety, did we not know that most of our abominations have a like origin. It was a moot question with Pagan and Christian philosophers as to the time, when the foetus " acquires the nature, and therefore the rights of a separate being;" in other words, when does it possess a soul? Plutarch, in one of his treatises, has a remarkable collection of ancient speculations on this topic. The Stoics made the soul and respiration commence together. The Justinian code fixes the union at forty days after conception. Thus no law in Greece condemned abortion and the Roman law did not punish it when voluntary until towards the end of the second century. For it was thought that the foetus "was but a part of the mother," and that she had the same right to remove it as if it were a wen. Yet the practice met with much disapproval, although so general. Ovid reproached Corinna for having been guilty of the act. A niece of Domitian died in consequence of the same. Seneca praised Holvia for not having resorted to it. Another writer classed it as a degree worse than a mother's putting out her children to nurse ; others described it as positively criminal. It was one of the practical glories of Christianity, however, that it condemned this crime from the first, and denounced it as positive murder, although the theologic speculations which afterwards supported this reformation were most revolting. Thus a Queen of Portugal, sister to our Henry V., when her life was in danger refused a medicine to accelerate the birth of her unborn child, on the ground that " she would not purchase her temporal life by the eternal damnation of her soul." For the theologians taught that from the moment of animation the foetus became an immortal being doomed for Adam's sin, if it perished unborn and unbaptised, to be " cast into the abyss of hell." By the legislation of modern times, however, "it is treated as a distinct being from the moment of conception," and to destroy it at any period is an act of murder.

 The destruction of children after birth, which we term infanticide, has been, perhaps, a more widespread custom than the other. Exposition was the habitual practice of poor parents, especially in the case of female infants, and whenever those of either sex were weak or deformed. Nor was this considered inconsistent with humanity. Men like Chremes in one of Terence's plays, could enjoin their wives to kill their offspring if they happened to be girls, and yet boast magniloquently, "I am a man, and deem nothing belonging to humanity beneath my notice." No doubt the Roman "gods" — to whom the practice was common — applauded vehemently. But we must not judge of these times by modern notions, for, excepting Germany chiefly, Europe was overrun with infanticide, just as China and other Asiatic nations are to day. One of our missionaries to the Celestial Empires relates that he saw not long ago this notice set up by the owner of a pool there :— "Ladies are requested not to drown their female infants in this pond." The policy of the Greeks was to restrain population ; that of Republican Rome to encourage it. But the Empire, with its sensuality and its extremes of wealth and poverty, made infanticide common, and laws were made to provide against it. Exposure, however, was not condemned, and children thus abandoned became the absolute property, without power of redemption, of those who found them. Their masters generally made a profit of the females when grown by compelling them to an infamous life, so that their fathers preferred their daughters to be killed rather than exposed. Exposure, however, was considered a venial offence, practised, as Lecky says, " on a gigantic scale, and with absolute impunity," and formed a considerable source of pecuniary speculation to the collectors of foundlings. Subsequently, but tardily and with much caution, the church provided for many of these little outcasts. Tradition says that Pope Innocent III. had been shocked at hearing that infants had been drawn into the nets of fishermen from the Tiber. A somewhat similar story is told of Gregory the Great, when he enforced his decretals on celibacy upon the clergy. Happening to draw his fish-ponds, the heads of more than six thousand infants were found in them—" the offspring of ecclesiastics, destroyed to avoid detection." But there is no doubt that a good monk, Guy de Montpellier, was the first author of foundling hospitals, and, although designed for legitimate children, they eventually became devoted to the illegitimate.

We are confronted with an almost insoluble problem— the conflict between physical and moral needs on the one hand, and social requirements and laws on the other. Concupiscence is strongest when reason and self-control are immature, and is greater than the welfare of man requires. Men, therefore, have formed two codes of morality — one for themselves, in which great laxity is permitted ; the other for women, in which no deviation is allowed except under pain of utter degradation. The taste of wine by a Roman matron was at one time counted next to adultery. By the same arbitrary rule, the indulgence of a natural instinct by an unmarried woman, is a crime never to be forgiven. We admit no extenuating circumstances—no margin for frailty, for inexperience, or youthful passion, or the intoxication of a sincere and unselfish love. We have only one reply—Anathema ! And hosts of infanticides are the result.

 Besides this, to quote Mr Leckey's eloquent words, " There has arisen in society a figure which is certainly the most mournful, and in some respects the most awful, upon which the eye of the moralist can dwell. That unhappy being whose very name is a shame to speak ; who counterfeits with a cold heart the transports of affection, and submits herself as the passive instrument of lust. . . On that one degraded and ignoble form are concentrated the passions that might have filled the world with shame. She remains, while creeds and civilisations rise and fall, the eternal priestess of humanity, blasted for the sins of the people. . . If the terrible censure which English public opinion passes upon every instance of female frailty in some degree diminishes their number, it does not prevent them from being extremely numerous, and it immeasurably aggravates the suffering they produce. Acts which, in other European countries would excite only a slight and transient emotion, spread in England over a wide circle, all the bitterness of unmitigated anguish. . . . Infanticide is greatly multiplied, and a vast proportion of those whose reputation and lives have been blasted by one momentary sin are hurled into the abyss of habitual prostitution — a condition which, owing to the sentence of public opinion, and the neglect of legislators, is in no other European country so hopelessly vicious or so irrevocable."

 In Spain, where the standard of female chastity is low, infanticide is almost unknown. We do not advocate imitation of Spanish habits. On the contrary, we would see our own raised. One thing is certain ; either the standard for men must be lifted, or that for women lowered. It is for the men to say which. The issue lies with them. But those terrible crimes which disgrace our country cannot be permitted to go on for ever.

Mount Alexander Mail, Thursday 9 May 1895 http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article198258453