FOUNDLING HOSPITALS

In those ancient nations with the details of whose social life we are acquainted, the practice of exposing new-born infants seems to have been, as it is at this day in China, a species of legitimate infanticide. Neither Plato nor Aristotle, nor in general any political writers of antiquity, condemn it; they merely profe to lay down rules for the preservation of the healthier and stronger, at the expense of the more weakly. Among the Greeks, a more tender mother chose the market-place, or some temple', for the exposure of her child, in order to have the chance of some charitable hand succouring it: if its death was desired, it was abandoned in solitary places; and their dramas and romances are full of narratives in which this custom forms the foundation of the interest. Thebes, in republican Greece, is the only state in which the exposure of children is known to have been forbidden by law. The practice of exposure was common in republican Rome: the law is doub.ful. The street called Velabrum {Juvenal, Sat. vi.), and the column called Lactaria(from this circumstance, according to some antiquaries) were places usually selected for the purpose. Abandoned children were declared by law to be the slaves or absolute property of those by whom they were brought up; and several were saved from death, not from humane motives, but that their foster-fathers might, by mutilating their person*^ and exhibiting them in the streets, derive an infamous livelihood from the alms given them by the pa engers. At length the progre of Christianity put an end to these disgusting enormities. The exposure of children was. made a punishable offence in a. d. 374; and their slavery was abolished by an edict of Just in i an in 530. Infanticide has most properly been prosecuted with the utmost rigour, and made a capital offence in almost all modern countries. But it was early supposed that were the exposure or abandonment of children wholly prohibited, there would, despite of all that could be done to prevent it, be a great deal of infanticide. In consequence of the prevalence of this feeling, it has been customary in the Christian world, from a very remote period, to connive at the abandonment of children, and to provide means for the support of those that might be abandoned; and hence the origin of Foundling Hospitals. The first distinct trace of an expre foundation for foundlings is at Milan in 787. In 1070 the order of Brothers of the Holy Ghost was established, with the expre purpose of taking care of sick, orphans, and foundlings. After that time this species of foundations rapidly multiplied in every part of Europe But while private beneficence was thus exerted in their behalf, the church, which in the earlier period had undertaken the general care of them, seems by degrees to have thrown on the commonalty, in most European countries, the charge of nourishing such as were not received into any of the foundations. Traces of legal contests between the religious and civil establishments on this subject are to be found in the history of France through the whole 16th century. The uncertain state of the law rendered their preservation in that country extremely precarious. St. Vincent de Paule.in the 17th century, undertook their cause; and the foundation of the great Foundling Hospital of Paris, in 1670, is due to his efforts. In the provinces, and in most Catholic countries, and in those under the Greek church, public charity took the same direction. It has been customary in these establishments to receive all children brought to them, without inquiring whether they were the fruit of regular marriages or of illicit amours! It seems idle to deny that the multiplication of such establishments, by providing a ready method for disposing of children, must have hindered a few cases of infanticide; but the injury they have done to public morals, and the waste of human life that they have occasioned, are ten times greater evils than any they have obviated. It is long, indeed, since well informed persons in this and other countries were aware of the pernicious tendency of foundling hospitals; and it is probable that, at no very distant period, they will be every where suppre ed. In France the multiplication of these hospitals, and of exposures, has called at last the attention of the public to the frightful immorality, mortality, and expense which attend it. In 1680, ten years after its foundation, the great hospital at Paris admitted 890; in 1750, 4000; in 1830, nearly 8000. In all France there were nourished at the public expense, in 1784, 40,000 children; in 1809,69,000; 1826, 118,000. The number is now about 130,000. It varies greatly in the different departments; being greatest in the north, centre, and south; least in the eastern departments bordering on Germany,^ and in the western, or Britanny, La Vendee, . And the statistics of France plainly show, as Me rs. Terme and Montfalcon, the authors of the most comprehensive work on the subject, explicitly declare, that it is " not poverty, but luxury, which produces exposures." The two great measures for reducing the burden which have lately been partially put in execution, are tlie supHh 4 [s. 484]