China, the only country where this cruel practice of exposing children prevails at present, is the most populous country we know, and every man is married before he is twenty. Such early marriages could scarcely be general had not men the prospect of so easy a method of getting rid of their children. I own that Plutarch speaks of it as a very universal maxim of the poor to expose their children, and as the rich were then averse to marriage on account of the courtship they met with from those who expected legacies {p124} from them, the public must have been in a bad situation between them.54
Of all sciences there is none where first appearances are more deceitful than in politics. Hospitals for foundlings seem favourable to the increase of numbers, and perhaps may be so when kept under proper restrictions; but when they open the door to every one, without distinction, they have probably a contrary effect, and are pernicious to the state. It is computed that every ninth child born at Paris is sent to the hospital, though it seems certain, according to the common course of human affairs, that it is not a hundredth part whose parents are altogether incapacitated to rear and educate them. The infinite difference, for health, industry, and morals, between an education in an hospital and that in a private family should induce us not to make the entrance into an hospital too easy and engaging. To kill one’s own child is shocking to nature, and must therefore be pretty unusual; but to turn over the care of him upon others is very tempting to the natural indolence of mankind.