New-York tribune. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1866-1924, 1873-09-10
KILLING GIRL-BABIES.


influence of an uncommon bilious access, pro-
posed that all male infants should be barreled
up until they reached the age OF
twenty-one years. The hobbledehoy, it
must be allowed, is apt to be irritat
ing, and we may go so far az to say exasperating
"a perpetual peg-top for the moral toes of
the sensitive, at once nOisily energetic and
supremacy selfish. One need not be disgrace
fully nervous to prefer the STILL winning, sooth-
ing, and fascinating ways of the little girls
who, mothers in posse though still so
tender in years, put their bran-stufied
babies to bed and Groom over
those absurd eidolons, the most soothing of
cradle-sOngs. IT'S the prettiest of sights and
sounds. The boy is smirched by the stain of
worldliness from the moment he discards long
clothes-he is combatiye, aggressive, greedy,
despotic, and sulky over his Sunday-schoOl
lessons, while the girl, unless she be girl
boy, which sometimes happens, glides into
womanhood with development which is only
q daily access of all charming attributes. We
suppose that it would be so even with the
Chinese girls, only the Celestial parents have
a habit, which our young lady readers are quite
at liberty to call horrid," of slaughtering
so many of the little women. Whether
"a the result of drinking too much tea
or of smoking too much opium, the infanti-
eide of girls has become so common in the
Flowery Kingdom that, conservative as the
Government has been (of boys, it is now
thought necessary to conserve the other sort,
and edicts and proclamations, and like printed
and paper in terroremS, have been lately issued
in great numbers against the Slaughter of the
She's. One of these documents, put out by
the Provincial Treasurer of Hupei, is before
U.s. 1t is piece of curious simplicity, and
brief account of it may be found amusing.
The Provincial Treasurer gives three rea-
sons why grl-babies are drowned, and justly
pronounces all three "most stupid" This kind
of murder is resorted to, 1st. Because the pa
rents have too many children already; I'd.
Ont of sheer chagrin because the girls are not
bovs: and Sd. Because the mother wishes to
hire herself as wet-nurse. Against these
motives the Treasurer proceeds to argue with
q simplicity sufficiently amusing and itself
child-hke. There is just suggestion OF the
moral and humane aspects OF the question, but
there is nothing more. For the rest, this good
Cbinaman might be O Jeremy Bentham or
Mr. Nautilus in wooden shoes. " Sons and
"bens.r says our amiably platitudinous friend,
care dependent upon the destiny of Heaven,
"and cannot be forcibly coaxed out of it.'
There is also touch of Jean Jacques Ros-
seau in the Hupei philosophy. " All those"
IL il said, "whO are unable to feed their
children through poverty can send them to
"tbe Founding Hospital, where they will be
" reared up until they become women and
"wives, and where they will always be sure
"of enjoying q natural life term" Then,
again. "Heaven's retribution is sure.' The
more female babies drowned, the more will be
born-the Treasurer has noticed this to be the
usual result of tho rash measures which he
denrecates But he reserves his very strongest
mint TO the last. The little girls who are
thus untimely cut off have dreadful way of
avencing the "deep damnation." They re-
turn as wraiths to haunt their unnatural fathers
and mothers, who thus "run the risk OF
"making victims of themselves by their
"behayior.' Good, say we, for the little
girls All honor to their ghostly pluck,
whether they walk "a pale specters OF CHATTER
the tea-cups or thump the tea-tabes Who
can blame "drownded" little girl. the vic