choice of the best rams for our sheep, rear the neatest kine, and keep the
best dogs, _Quanto id diligentius in procreandis liberis observandum_? And
how careful then should we be in begetting of our children? In former times
some [1344]countries have been so chary in this behalf, so stern, that if a
child were crooked or deformed in body or mind, they made him away; so did
the Indians of old by the relation of Curtius, and many other well-governed
commonwealths, according to the discipline of those times. Heretofore in
Scotland, saith [1345]Hect. Boethius, "if any were visited with the falling
sickness, madness, gout, leprosy, or any such dangerous disease, which was
likely to be propagated from the father to the son, he was instantly
gelded; a woman kept from all company of men; and if by chance having some
such disease, she were found to be with child, she with her brood were
buried alive:" and this was done for the common good, lest the whole nation
should be injured or corrupted. A severe doom you will say, and not to be
used amongst Christians, yet more to be looked into than it is. For now by
our too much facility in this kind, in giving way for all to marry that
will, too much liberty and indulgence in tolerating all sorts, there is a
vast confusion of hereditary diseases, no family secure, no man almost free
from some grievous infirmity or other, when no choice is had, but still the
eldest must marry, as so many stallions of the race; or if rich, be they
fools or dizzards, lame or maimed, unable, intemperate, dissolute, exhaust
through riot, as he said, [1346]_jura haereditario sapere jubentur_; they
must be wise and able by inheritance: it comes to pass that our generation
is corrupt, we have many weak persons, both in body and mind, many feral
diseases raging amongst us, crazed families, _parentes, peremptores_; our
fathers bad, and we are like to be worse.


MEMB. II.