295. The other instance relates to a HOUSE-MARTEN. It is well known that these birds build their nests under the eaves of inhabited houses, and sometimes under those of door porches; but we had one that built its nest in the house, and upon the top of a common doorcase, the door of which opened into a room out of the main passage into the house. Perceiving the marten had begun to build its nest here, we kept the front-door open in the daytime; but were obliged to fasten it at night. It went on, had eggs, young ones, and the young ones flew. I used to open the door in the morning early, and then the birds carried on their affairs till night. The next year the MARTEN came again, and had another brood in the same place. It found its old nest; and having repaired it, and put it in order, went on again in the former way; and it would, I dare say, have continued to come to the end of its life, if we had remained there so long, notwithstanding there were six healthy children in the house, making just as much noise as they pleased.

296. Now, what sagacity in these birds, to discover that those were places of safety! And how happy must it have made us, the parents, to be sure that our children had thus deeply imbibed habits the contrary of cruelty! For, be it engraven on your heart, YOUNG MAN, that, whatever appearances may say to the contrary, cruelty is always accompanied with cowardice, and also with perfidy, when that is called for by the circumstances of the case; and that habitual acts of cruelty to other creatures, will, nine times out of ten, produce, when the power is possessed, cruelty to human beings. The ill-usage of horses, and particularly asses, is a grave and a just charge against this nation. No other nation on earth is guilty of it to the same extent. Not only by blows, but by privation, are we cruel towards these useful, docile, and patient creatures; and especially towards the last, which is the most docile and patient and laborious of the two, while the food that satisfies it, is of the coarsest and least costly kind, and in quantity so small! In the habitual ill-treatment of this animal, which, in addition to all its labours, has the milk taken from its young ones to administer a remedy for our ailments, there is something that bespeaks ingratitude hardly to be described. In a REGISTER that I wrote from Long Island, I said, that amongst all the things of which I had been bereft, I regretted no one so much as a very diminutive mare, on which my children had all, in succession, learned to ride. She was become useless for them, and, indeed, for any other purpose; but the recollection of her was so entwined with so many past circumstances, which, at that distance, my mind conjured up, that I really was very uneasy, lest she should fall into cruel hands. By good luck, she was, after a while, turned out on the wide world to shift for herself; and when we got back, and had a place for her to stand in, from her native forest we brought her to Kensington, and she is now at Barn-Elm, about twenty-six years old, and I dare say, as fat as a mole. Now, not only have I no moral right (considering my ability to pay for keep) to deprive her of life; but it would be unjust and ungrateful, in me to withhold from her sufficient food and lodging to make life as pleasant as possible while that life last.

297. In the meanwhile the book-learning crept in of its own accord, by imperceptible degrees. Children naturally want to be like their parents, and to do what they do: the boys following their father, and the girls their mother; and as I was always writing or reading, mine naturally desired to do something in the same way. But, at the same time, they heard no talk from fools or drinkers; saw me with no idle, gabbling, empty companions; saw no vain and affected coxcombs, and no tawdry and extravagant women; saw no nasty gormandizing; and heard no gabble about play-houses and romances and the other nonsense that fit boys to be lobby-loungers, and girls to be the ruin of industrious and frugal young men.

298. We wanted no stimulants of this sort to keep up our spirits: our various pleasing pursuits were quite sufficient for that; and the book-learning came amongst the rest of the pleasures, to which it was, in some sort, necessary. I remember that, one year, I raised a prodigious crop of fine melons, under hand-glasses; and I learned how to do it from a gardening book; or, at least, that book was necessary to remind me of the details. Having passed part of an evening in talking to the boys about getting this crop, 'Come,' said I, 'now, let us read the book.' Then the book came forth, and to work we went, following very strictly the precepts of the book. I read the thing but once, but the eldest boy read it, perhaps, twenty times over; and explained all about the matter to the others. Why here was a motive! Then he had to tell the garden-labourer what to do to the melons. Now, I will engage, that more was really learned by this single lesson, than would have been learned by spending, at this son's age, a year at school; and he happy and delighted all the while. When any dispute arose amongst them about hunting or shooting, or any other of their pursuits, they, by degrees, found out the way of settling it by reference to some book; and when any difficulty occurred, as to the meaning, they referred to me, who, if at home, always instantly attended to them, in these matters.

299. They began writing by taking words out of printed books; finding out which letter was which, by asking me, or asking those who knew the letters one from another; and by imitating bits of my writing, it is surprising how soon they began to write a hand like mine, very small, very faint-stroked, and nearly plain as print. The first use that any one of them made of the pen, was to write to me, though in the same house with them. They began doing this in mere scratches, before they knew how to make any one letter; and as I was always folding up letters and directing them, so were they; and they were sure to receive a prompt answer, with most encouraging compliments. All the meddlings and teazings of friends, and, what was more serious, the pressing prayers of their anxious mother, about sending them to school, I withstood without the slightest effect on my resolution. As to friends, preferring my own judgment to theirs, I did not care much; but an expression of anxiety, implying a doubt of the soundness of my own judgment, coming, perhaps, twenty times a day from her whose care they were as well as mine, was not a matter to smile at, and very great trouble it did give me. My answer at last was, as to the boys, I want them to be like me; and as to the girls, In whose hands can they be so safe as in yours? Therefore my resolution is taken: go to school they shall not.

300. Nothing is much more annoying than the intermeddling of friends, in a case like this. The wife appeals to them, and 'good breeding,' that is to say, nonsense, is sure to put them on her side. Then, they, particularly the women, when describing the surprising progress made by their own sons at school, used, if one of mine were present, to turn to him, and ask, to what school he went, and what he was learning? I leave any one to judge of his opinion of her; and whether he would like her the better for that! 'Bless me, so tall, and not learned any thing yet!' 'Oh yes, he has,' I used to say, 'he has learned to ride, and hunt, and shoot, and fish, and look after cattle and sheep, and to work in the garden, and to feed his dogs, and to go from village to village in the dark.' This was the way I used to manage with troublesome customers of this sort. And how glad the children used to be, when they got clear of such criticising people! And how grateful they felt to me for the protection which they saw that I gave them against that state of restraint, of which other people's boys complained! Go whither they might, they found no place so pleasant as home, and no soul that came near them affording them so many means of gratification as they received from me.

301. In this happy state we lived, until the year 1810, when the government laid its merciless fangs upon me, dragged me from these delights, and crammed me into a jail amongst felons; of which I shall have to speak more fully, when, in the last Number, I come to speak of the duties of THE CITIZEN. This added to the difficulties of my task of teaching; for now I was snatched away from the only scene in which it could, as I thought, properly be executed. But even these difficulties were got over. The blow was, to be sure, a terrible one; and, oh God! how was it felt by these poor children! It was in the month of July when the horrible sentence was passed upon me. My wife, having left her children in the care of her good and affectionate sister, was in London, waiting to know the doom of her husband. When the news arrived at Botley, the three boys, one eleven, another nine, and the other seven, years old, were hoeing cabbages in that garden which had been the source of so much delight. When the account of the savage sentence was brought to them, the youngest could not, for some time, be made to understand what a jail was; and, when he did, he, all in a tremor, exclaimed, 'Now I'm sure, William, that PAPA is not in a place like that!' The other, in order to disguise his tears and smother his sobs, fell to work with the hoe, and chopped about like a blind person. This account, when it reached me, affected me more, filled me with deeper resentment, than any other circumstance. And, oh! how I despise the wretches who talk of my vindictiveness; of my exultation at the confusion of those who inflicted those sufferings! How I despise the base creatures, the crawling slaves, the callous and cowardly hypocrites, who affect to be 'shocked' (tender souls!) at my expressions of joy, and at the death of Gibbs, Ellenborough, Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, and the rest of the tribe that I have already seen out, and at the fatal workings of that system, for endeavouring to check which I was thus punished! How I despise these wretches, and how I, above all things, enjoy their ruin, and anticipate their utter beggary! What! I am to forgive, am I, injuries like this; and that, too, without any atonement? Oh, no! I have not so read the Holy Scriptures; I have not, from them, learned that I am not to rejoice at the fall of unjust foes; and it makes a part of my happiness to be able to tell millions of men that I do thus rejoice, and that I have the means of calling on so many just and merciful men to rejoice along with me.

302. Now, then, the book-learning was forced upon us. I had a farm in hand. It was necessary that I should be constantly informed of what was doing. I gave all the orders, whether as to purchases, sales, ploughing, sowing, breeding; in short, with regard to every thing, and the things were endless in number and variety, and always full of interest. My eldest son and daughter could now write well and fast. One or the other of these was always at Botley; and I had with me (having hired the best part of the keeper's house) one or two, besides either this brother or sister; the mother coming up to town about once in two or three months, leaving the house and children in the care of her sister. We had a HAMPER, with a lock and two keys, which came up once a week, or oftener, bringing me fruit and all sorts of country fare, for the carriage of which, cost free, I was indebted to as good a man as ever God created, the late Mr. GEORGE ROGERS, of Southampton, who, in the prime of life, died deeply lamented by thousands, but by none more deeply than by me and my family, who have to thank him, and the whole of his excellent family, for benefits and marks of kindness without number.

303. This HAMPER, which was always, at both ends of the line, looked for with the most lively feelings, became our school. It brought me a journal of labours, proceedings, and occurrences, written on paper of shape and size uniform, and so contrived, as to margins, as to admit of binding. The journal used, when my son was the writer, to be interspersed with drawings of our dogs, colts, or any thing that he wanted me to have a correct idea of. The hamper brought me plants, bulbs, and the like, that I might see the size of them; and always every one sent his or her most beautiful flowers; the earliest violets, and primroses, and cowslips, and blue-bells; the earliest twigs of trees; and, in short, every thing that they thought calculated to delight me. The moment the hamper arrived, I, casting aside every thing else, set to work to answer every question, to give new directions, and to add anything likely to give pleasure at Botley. Every hamper brought one 'letter,' as they called it, if not more, from every child; and to every letter I wrote an answer, sealed up and sent to the party, being sure that that was the way to produce other and better letters; for, though they could not read what I wrote, and though their own consisted at first of mere scratches, and afterwards, for a while, of a few words written down for them to imitate, I always thanked them for their 'pretty letter'; and never expressed any wish to see them write better; but took care to write in a very neat and plain hand myself, and to do up my letter in a very neat manner.

304. Thus, while the ferocious tigers thought I was doomed to incessant mortification, and to rage that must extinguish my mental powers, I found in my children, and in their spotless and courageous and most affectionate mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those tigers were strangers. 'Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid.' How often did this line of Pope occur to me when I opened the little spuddling 'letters' from Botley! This correspondence occupied a good part of my time: I had all the children with me, turn and turn about; and, in order to give the boys exercise, and to give the two eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used, for a part of the two years, to send them a few hours in the day to an ABBE, who lived in Castle-street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to my mind; and, when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned fresh and cheerful, full of vigour, and full of hope, of finally seeing my unjust and merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without caring a straw on whom their fall might bring calamity, so that my own family were safe; because, say what any one might, the community, taken as a whole, had suffered this thing to be done unto us.

305. The paying of the work-people, the keeping of the accounts, the referring to books, the writing and reading of letters; this everlasting mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to my own surprise, find, at the end of the two years, that I had a parcel of scholars growing up about me; and, long before the end of the time, I had dictated many Registers to my two eldest children. Then, there was copying out of books, which taught spelling correctly. The calculations about the farming affairs forced arithmetic upon us: the use, the necessity, of the thing, led to the study. By-and-by, we had to look into the laws to know what to do about the highways, about the game, about the poor, and all rural and parochial affairs. I was, indeed, by the fangs of the government, defeated in my fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land, and keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating enjoyments; but those fangs, merciless as they had been, had not been able to prevent me from laying in for their lives a store of useful information, habits of industry, care, sobriety, and a taste for innocent, healthful, and manly pleasures: the fangs had made me and them pennyless; but, they had not been able to take from us our health or our mental possessions; and these were ready for application as circumstances might ordain.

306. After the age that I have now been speaking of, fourteen, I suppose every one became a reader and writer according to fancy. As to books, with the exception of the Poets, I never bought, in my whole life, any one that I did not want for some purpose of utility, and of practical utility too. I have two or three times had the whole collection snatched away from me; and have begun again to get them together as they were wanted. Go and kick an ANT's nest about, and you will see the little laborious, courageous creatures instantly set to work to get it together again; and if you do this ten times over, ten times over they will do the same. Here is the sort of stuff that men must be made of to oppose, with success, those who, by whatever means, get possession of great and mischievous power.

307. Now, I am aware, that that which I did, cannot be done by every one of hundreds of thousands of fathers, each of whom loves his children with all his soul: I am aware that the attorney, the surgeon, the physician, the trader, and even the farmer, cannot, generally speaking, do what I did, and that they must, in most cases, send their sons to school, if it be necessary for them to have book-learning. But while I say this, I know, that there are many things, which I did, which many fathers might do, and which, nevertheless, they do not do. It is in the power of every father to live at home with his family, when not compelled by business, or by public duty, to be absent: it is in his power to set an example of industry and sobriety and frugality, and to prevent a taste for gaming, dissipation, extravagance, from getting root in the minds of his children: it is in his power to continue to make his children hearers, when he is reproving servants for idleness, or commending them for industry and care: it is in his power to keep all dissolute and idly-talking companions from his house: it is in his power to teach them, by his uniform example, justice and mercy towards the inferior animals: it is in his power to do many other things, and something in the way of book-learning too, however busy his life may be. It is completely within his power to teach them early-rising and early going to bed; and, if many a man, who says that he has not time to teach his children, were to sit down, in sincerity, with a pen and a bit of paper, and put down all the minutes, which he, in every twenty-four hours, wastes over the bottle, or over cheese and oranges and raisins and biscuits, after he has dined; how many he lounges away, either at the coffee-house or at home, over the useless part of newspapers; how many he spends in waiting for the coming and the managing of the tea-table; how many he passes by candle-light, wearied of his existence, when he might be in bed; how many he passes in the morning in bed, while the sun and dew shine and sparkle for him in vain: if he were to put all these together, and were to add those which he passes in the reading of books for his mere personal amusement, and without the smallest chance of acquiring from them any useful practical knowledge: if he were to sum up the whole of these, and add to them the time worse than wasted in the contemptible work of dressing off his person, he would be frightened at the result; would send for his boys from school; and if greater book-learning than he possessed were necessary, he would choose for the purpose some man of ability, and see the teaching carried on under his own roof, with safety as to morals, and with the best chance as to health.

308. If after all, however, a school must be resorted to, let it, if in your power, be as little populous as possible. As 'evil communications corrupt good manners,' so the more numerous the assemblage, and the more extensive the communication, the greater the chance of corruption. Jails, barracks, factories, do not corrupt by their walls, but by their condensed numbers. Populous cities corrupt from the same cause; and it is, because it must be, the same with regard to schools, out of which children come not what they were when they went in. The master is, in some sort, their enemy; he is their overlooker; he is a spy upon them; his authority is maintained by his absolute power of punishment; the parent commits them to that power; to be taught is to be held in restraint; and, as the sparks fly upwards, the teaching and the restraint will not be divided in the estimation of the boy. Besides all this, there is the great disadvantage of tardiness in arriving at years of discretion. If boys live only with boys, their ideas will continue to be boyish; if they see and hear and converse with nobody but boys, how are they to have the thoughts and the character of men? It is, at last, only by hearing men talk and seeing men act, that they learn to talk and act like men; and, therefore, to confine them to the society of boys, is to retard their arrival at the years of discretion; and in case of adverse circumstances in the pecuniary way, where, in all the creation, is there so helpless a mortal as a boy who has always been at school! But, if, as I said before, a school there must be, let the congregation be as small as possible; and, do not expect too much from the master; for, if it be irksome to you to teach your own sons, what must that teaching be to him? If he have great numbers, he must delegate his authority; and, like all other delegated authority, it will either be abused or neglected.

309. With regard to girls, one would think that mothers would want no argument to make them shudder at the thought of committing the care of their daughters to other hands than their own. If fortune have so favoured them as to make them rationally desirous that their daughters should have more of what are called accomplishments than they themselves have, it has also favoured them with the means of having teachers under their own eye. If it have not favoured them so highly as this (and it seldom has in the middle rank of life), what duty so sacred as that imposed on a mother to be the teacher of her daughters! And is she, from love of ease or of pleasure or of any thing else, to neglect this duty; is she to commit her daughters to the care of persons, with whose manners and morals it is impossible for her to be thoroughly acquainted; is she to send them into the promiscuous society of girls, who belong to nobody knows whom, and come from nobody knows whither, and some of whom, for aught she can know to the contrary, may have been corrupted before, and sent thither to be hidden from their former circle; is she to send her daughters to be shut up within walls, the bare sight of which awaken the idea of intrigue and invite to seduction and surrender; is she to leave the health of her daughters to chance, to shut them up with a motley bevy of strangers, some of whom, as is frequently the case, are proclaimed bastards, by the undeniable testimony given by the colour of their skin; is she to do all this, and still put forward pretensions to the authority and the affection due to a mother! And, are you to permit all this, and still call yourself a father!

310. Well, then, having resolved to teach your own children, or, to have them taught, at home, let us now see how they ought to proceed as to books for learning. It is evident, speaking of boys, that, at last, they must study the art, or science, that you intend them to pursue; if they be to be surgeons, they must read books on surgery; and the like in other cases. But, there are certain elementary studies; certain books to be used by all persons, who are destined to acquire any book-learning at all. Then there are departments, or branches of knowledge, that every man in the middle rank of life, ought, if he can, to acquire, they being, in some sort, necessary to his reputation as a well-informed man, a character to which the farmer and the shopkeeper ought to aspire as well as the lawyer and the surgeon. Let me now, then, offer my advice as to the course of reading, and the manner of reading, for a boy, arrived at his fourteenth year, that being, in my opinion, early enough for him to begin.

311. And, first of all, whether as to boys or girls, I deprecate romances of every description. It is impossible that they can do any good, and they may do a great deal of harm. They excite passions that ought to lie dormant; they give the mind a taste for highly-seasoned matter; they make matters of real life insipid; every girl, addicted to them, sighs to be a SOPHIA WESTERN, and every boy, a TOM JONES. What girl is not in love with the wild youth, and what boy does not find a justification for his wildness? What can be more pernicious than the teachings of this celebrated romance? Here are two young men put before us, both sons of the same mother; the one a bastard (and by a parson too), the other a legitimate child; the former wild, disobedient, and squandering; the latter steady, sober, obedient, and frugal; the former every thing that is frank and generous in his nature, the latter a greedy hypocrite; the former rewarded with the most beautiful and virtuous of women and a double estate, the latter punished by being made an outcast. How is it possible for young people to read such a book, and to look upon orderliness, sobriety, obedience, and frugality, as virtues? And this is the tenor of almost every romance, and of almost every play, in our language. In the 'School for Scandal,' for instance, we see two brothers; the one a prudent and frugal man, and, to all appearance, a moral man, the other a hair-brained squanderer, laughing at the morality of his brother; the former turns out to be a base hypocrite and seducer, and is brought to shame and disgrace; while the latter is found to be full of generous sentiment, and Heaven itself seems to interfere to give him fortune and fame. In short, the direct tendency of the far greater part of these books, is, to cause young people to despise all those virtues, without the practice of which they must be a curse to their parents, a burden to the community, and must, except by mere accident, lead wretched lives. I do not recollect one romance nor one play, in our language, which has not this tendency. How is it possible for young princes to read the historical plays of the punning and smutty Shakspeare, and not think, that to be drunkards, blackguards, the companions of debauchees and robbers, is the suitable beginning of a glorious reign?

312. There is, too, another most abominable principle that runs through them all, namely, that there is in high birth, something of superior nature, instinctive courage, honour, and talent. Who can look at the two royal youths in CYMBELINE, or at the noble youth in DOUGLAS, without detesting the base parasites who wrote those plays? Here are youths, brought up by shepherds, never told of their origin, believing themselves the sons of these humble parents, but discovering, when grown up, the highest notions of valour and honour, and thirsting for military renown, even while tending their reputed fathers' flocks and herds! And, why this species of falsehood? To cheat the mass of the people; to keep them in abject subjection; to make them quietly submit to despotic sway. And the infamous authors are guilty of the cheat, because they are, in one shape or another, paid by oppressors out of means squeezed from the people. A true picture would give us just the reverse; would show us that 'high birth' is the enemy of virtue, of valour, and of talent; would show us, that with all their incalculable advantages, royal and noble families have, only by mere accident, produced a great man; that, in general, they have been amongst the most effeminate, unprincipled, cowardly, stupid, and, at the very least, amongst the most useless persons, considered as individuals, and not in connexion with the prerogatives and powers bestowed on them solely by the law.

313. It is impossible for me, by any words that I can use, to express, to the extent of my thoughts, the danger of suffering young people to form their opinions from the writings of poets and romances. Nine times out of ten, the morality they teach is bad, and must have a bad tendency. Their wit is employed to ridicule virtue, as you will almost always find, if you examine the matter to the bottom. The world owes a very large part of its sufferings to tyrants; but what tyrant was there amongst the ancients, whom the poets did not place amongst the gods? Can you open an English poet, without, in some part or other of his works, finding the grossest flatteries of royal and noble persons? How are young people not to think that the praises bestowed on these persons are just? DRYDEN, PARNELL, GAY, THOMSON, in short, what poet have we had, or have we, POPE only excepted, who was not, or is not, a pensioner, or a sinecure placeman, or the wretched dependent of some part of the Aristocracy? Of the extent of the powers of writers in producing mischief to a nation, we have two most striking instances in the cases of Dr. JOHNSON and BURKE. The former, at a time when it was a question whether war should be made on America to compel her to submit to be taxed by the English parliament, wrote a pamphlet, entitled, 'Taxation no Tyranny,' to urge the nation into that war. The latter, when it was a question, whether England should wage war against the people of France, to prevent them from reforming their government, wrote a pamphlet to urge the nation into that war. The first war lost us America, the last cost us six hundred millions of money, and has loaded us with forty millions a year of taxes. JOHNSON, however, got a pension for his life, and BURKE a pension for his life, and for three lives after his own! CUMBERLAND and MURPHY, the play-writers, were pensioners; and, in short, of the whole mass, where has there been one, whom the people were not compelled to pay for labours, having for their principal object the deceiving and enslaving of that same people? It is, therefore, the duty of every father, when he puts a book into the hands of his son or daughter, to give the reader a true account of who and what the writer of the book was, or is.

314. If a boy be intended for any particular calling, he ought, of course, to be induced to read books relating to that calling, if such books there be; and, therefore, I shall not be more particular on that head. But, there are certain things, that all men in the middle rank of life, ought to know something of; because the knowledge will be a source of pleasure; and because the want of it must, very frequently, give them pain, by making them appear inferior, in point of mind, to many who are, in fact, their inferiors in that respect. These things are grammar, arithmetic, history, accompanied with geography Without these, a man, in the middle rank of life, however able he may be in his calling, makes but an awkward figure. Without grammar he cannot, with safety to his character as a well-informed man, put his thoughts upon paper; nor can he be sure, that he is speaking with propriety. How many clever men have I known, full of natural talent, eloquent by nature, replete with every thing calculated to give them weight in society; and yet having little or no weight, merely because unable to put correctly upon paper that which they have in their minds! For me not to say, that I deem my English Grammar the best book for teaching this science, would be affectation, and neglect of duty besides; because I know, that it is the best; because I wrote it for the purpose; and because, hundreds and hundreds of men and women have told me, some verbally, and some by letter, that, though (many of them) at grammar schools for years, they really never knew any thing of grammar, until they studied my book. I, who know well all the difficulties that I experienced when I read books upon the subject, can easily believe this, and especially when I think of the numerous instances in which I have seen university-scholars unable to write English, with any tolerable degree of correctness. In this book, the principles are so clearly explained, that the disgust arising from intricacy is avoided; and it is this disgust, that is the great and mortal enemy of acquiring knowledge.

315. With regard to ARITHMETIC, it is a branch of learning absolutely necessary to every one, who has any pecuniary transactions beyond those arising out of the expenditure of his week's wages. All the books on this subject that I had ever seen, were so bad, so destitute of every thing calculated to lead the mind into a knowledge of the matter, so void of principles, and so evidently tending to puzzle and disgust the learner, by their sententious, and crabbed, and quaint, and almost hieroglyphical definitions, that I, at one time, had the intention of writing a little work on the subject myself. It was put off, from one cause or another; but a little work on the subject has been, partly at my suggestion, written and published by Mr. THOMAS SMITH of Liverpool, and is sold by Mr. SHERWOOD, in London. The author has great ability, and a perfect knowledge of his subject. It is a book of principles; and any young person of common capacity, will learn more from it in a week, than from all the other books, that I ever saw on the subject, in a twelve-month.

316. While the foregoing studies are proceeding, though they very well afford a relief to each other, HISTORY may serve as a relaxation, particularly during the study of grammar, which is an undertaking requiring patience and time. Of all history, that of our own country is of the most importance; because, for want of a thorough knowledge of what has been, we are, in many cases, at a loss to account for what is, and still more at a loss, to be able to show what ought to be. The difference between history and romance is this; that that which is narrated in the latter, leaves in the mind nothing which it can apply to present or future circumstances and events; while the former, when it is what it ought to be, leaves the mind stored with arguments for experience, applicable, at all times, to the actual affairs of life. The history of a country ought to show the origin and progress of its institutions, political, civil, and ecclesiastical; it ought to show the effects of those institutions upon the state of the people; it ought to delineate the measures of the government at the several epochs; and, having clearly described the state of the people at the several periods, it ought to show the cause of their freedom, good morals, and happiness; or of their misery, immorality, and slavery; and this, too, by the production of indubitable facts, and of inferences so manifestly fair, as to leave not the smallest doubt upon the mind.

317. Do the histories of England which we have, answer this description? They are very little better than romances. Their contents are generally confined to narrations relating to battles, negociations, intrigues, contests between rival sovereignties, rival nobles, and to the character of kings, queens, mistresses, bishops, ministers, and the like; from scarcely any of which can the reader draw any knowledge which is at all applicable to the circumstances of the present day.

318. Besides this, there is the falsehood; and the falsehoods contained in these histories, where shall we find any thing to surpass? Let us take one instance. They all tell us, that William the Conqueror knocked down twenty-six parish churches, and laid waste the parishes in order to make the New Forest; and this in a tract of the very poorest land in England, where the churches must then have stood at about one mile and two hundred yards from each other. The truth is, that all the churches are still standing that were there when William landed, and the whole story is a sheer falsehood from the beginning to the end.

319. But, this is a mere specimen of these romances; and that too, with regard to a matter comparatively unimportant to us. The important falsehoods are, those which misguide us by statement or by inference, with regard to the state of the people at the several epochs, as produced by the institutions of the country, or the measures of the Government. It is always the object of those who have power in their hands, to persuade the people that they are better off than their forefathers were: it is the great business of history to show how this matter stands; and, with respect to this great matter, what are we to learn from any thing that has hitherto been called a history of England! I remember, that, about a dozen years ago, I was talking with a very clever young man, who had read twice or thrice over the History of England, by different authors; and that I gave the conversation a turn that drew from him, unperceived by himself, that he did not know how tithes, parishes, poor-rates, church-rates, and the abolition of trial by jury in hundreds of cases, came to be in England; and, that he had not the smallest idea of the manner in which the Duke of Bedford came to possess the power of taxing our cabbages in Covent-Garden. Yet, this is history. I have done a great deal, with regard to matters of this sort, in my famous History of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION; for I may truly call that famous, which has been translated and published in all the modern languages.

320. But, it is reserved for me to write a complete history of the country from the earliest times to the present day; and this, God giving me life and health, I shall begin to do in monthly numbers, beginning on the first of September, and in which I shall endeavour to combine brevity with clearness. We do not want to consume our time over a dozen pages about Edward the Third dancing at a ball, picking up a lady's garter, and making that garter the foundation of an order of knighthood, bearing the motto of 'Honi soit qui mal y pense? It is not stuff like this; but we want to know what was the state of the people; what were a labourer's wages; what were the prices of the food, and how the labourers were dressed in the reign of that great king. What is a young person to imbibe from a history of England, as it is called, like that of Goldsmith? It is a little romance to amuse children; and the other historians have given us larger romances to amuse lazy persons who are grown up. To destroy the effects of these, and to make the people know what their country has been, will be my object; and this, I trust, I shall effect. We are, it is said, to have a History of England from SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH; a History of Scotland from SIR WALTER SCOTT; and a HISTORY OF IRELAND from Tommy Moore, the luscious poet. A Scotch lawyer, who is a pensioner, and a member for Knaresborough, which is well known to the Duke of Devonshire, who has the great tithes of twenty parishes in Ireland, will, doubtless, write a most impartial History of England, and particularly as far as relates to boroughs and tithes. A Scotch romance-writer, who, under the name of Malagrowther, wrote a pamphlet to prove, that one-pound-notes were the cause of riches to Scotland, will write, to be sure, a most instructive History of Scotland. And, from the pen of a Irish poet, who is a sinecure placeman, and a protege of an English peer that has immense parcels of Irish confiscated estates, what a beautiful history shall we not then have of unfortunate Ireland! Oh, no! We are not going to be content with stuff such as these men will bring out. Hume and Smollett and Robertson have cheated us long enough. We are not in a humour to be cheated any longer.

321. GEOGRAPHY is taught at schools, if we believe the school-cards. The scholars can tell you all about the divisions of the earth, and this is very well for persons who have leisure to indulge their curiosity; but it does seem to me monstrous that a young person's time should be spent in ascertaining the boundaries of Persia or China, knowing nothing all the while about the boundaries, the rivers, the soil, or the products, or of the any thing else of Yorkshire or Devonshire. The first thing in geography is to know that of the country in which we live, especially that in which we were born: I have now seen almost every hill and valley in it with my own eyes; nearly every city and every town, and no small part of the whole of the villages. I am therefore qualified to give an account of the country; and that account, under the title of Geographical Dictionary of England and Wales, I am now having printed as a companion to my history.

322. When a young man well understands the geography of his own country; when he has referred to maps on this smaller scale; when, in short, he knows all about his own country, and is able to apply his knowledge to useful purposes, he may look at other countries, and particularly at those, the powers or measures of which are likely to affect his own country. It is of great importance to us to be well acquainted with the extent of France, the United States, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Turkey, and Russia; but what need we care about the tribes of Asia and Africa, the condition of which can affect us no more than we would be affected by any thing that is passing in the moon?

323. When people have nothing useful to do, they may indulge their curiosity; but, merely to read books, is not to be industrious, is not to study, and is not the way to become learned. Perhaps there are none more lazy, or more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers. A book is an admirable excuse for sitting still; and, a man who has constantly a newspaper, a magazine, a review, or some book or other in his hand, gets, at last, his head stuffed with such a jumble, that he knows not what to think about any thing. An empty coxcomb, that wastes his time in dressing, strutting, or strolling about, and picking his teeth, is certainly a most despicable creature, but scarcely less so than a mere reader of books, who is, generally, conceited, thinks himself wiser than other men, in proportion to the number of leaves that he has turned over. In short, a young man should bestow his time upon no book, the contents of which he cannot apply to some useful purpose.

324. Books of travels, of biography, natural history, and particularly such as relate to agriculture and horticulture, are all proper, when leisure is afforded for them; and the two last are useful to a very great part of mankind; but, unless the subjects treated of are of some interest to us in our affairs, no time should be wasted upon them, when there are so many duties demanded at our hands by our families and our country. A man may read books for ever, and be an ignorant creature at last, and even the more ignorant for his reading.

325. And, with regard to young women, everlasting book-reading is absolutely a vice. When they once get into the habit, they neglect all other matters, and, in some cases, even their very dress. Attending to the affairs of the house: to the washing, the baking, the brewing, the preservation and cooking of victuals, the management of the poultry and the garden; these are their proper occupations. It is said (with what truth I know not) of the present Queen (wife of William IV), that she was an active, excellent manager of her house. Impossible to bestow on her greater praise; and I trust that her example will have its due effect on the young women of the present day, who stand, but too generally, in need of that example.

326. The great fault of the present generation, is, that, in all ranks, the notions of self-importance are too high. This has arisen from causes not visible to many, out the consequences are felt by all, and that, too, with great severity. There has been a general sublimating going on for many years. Not to put the word Esquire before the name of almost any man who is not a mere labourer or artisan, is almost an affront. Every merchant, every master-manufacturer, every dealer, if at all rich, is an Esquire; squires' sons must be gentlemen, and squires' wives and daughters ladies. If this were all; if it were merely a ridiculous misapplication of words, the evil would not be great; but, unhappily, words lead to acts and produce things; and the 'young gentleman' is not easily to be moulded into a tradesman or a working farmer. And yet the world is too small to hold so many gentlemen and ladies. How many thousands of young men have, at this moment, cause to lament that they are not carpenters, or masons, or tailors, or shoemakers; and how many thousands of those, that they have been bred up to wish to disguise their honest and useful, and therefore honourable, calling! ROUSSEAU observes, that men are happy, first, in proportion to their virtue, and next, in proportion to their independence; and that, of all mankind, the artisan, or craftsman, is the most independent; because he carries about, in his own hands and person, the means of gaining his livelihood; and that the more common the use of the articles on which he works, the more perfect his independence. 'Where,' says he, 'there is one man that stands in need of the talents of the dentist, there are a hundred thousand that want those of the people who supply the matter for the teeth to work on; and for one who wants a sonnet to regale his fancy, there are a million clamouring for men to make or mend their shoes.' Aye, and this is the reason, why shoemakers are proverbially the most independent part of the people, and why they, in general, show more public spirit than any other men. He who lives by a pursuit, be it what it may, which does not require a considerable degree of bodily labour, must, from the nature of things, be, more or less, a dependent; and this is, indeed, the price which he pays for his exemption from that bodily labour. He may arrive at riches, or fame, or both; and this chance he sets against the certainty of independence in humbler life. There always have been, there always will be, and there always ought to be, some men to take this chance: but to do this has become the fashion, and a fashion it is the most fatal that ever seized upon a community.

327. With regard to young women, too, to sing, to play on instruments of music, to draw, to speak French, and the like, are very agreeable qualifications; but why should they all be musicians, and painters, and linguists? Why all of them? Who, then, is there left to take care of the houses of farmers and traders? But there is something in these 'accomplishments' worse than this; namely, that they think themselves too high for farmers and traders: and this, in fact, they are; much too high; and, therefore, the servant-girls step in and supply their place. If they could see their own interest, surely they would drop this lofty tone, and these lofty airs. It is, however, the fault of the parents, and particularly of the father, whose duty it is to prevent them from imbibing such notions, and to show them, that the greatest honour they ought to aspire to is, thorough skill and care in the economy of a house. We are all apt to set too high a value on what we ourselves have done; and I may do this; but I do firmly believe, that to cure any young woman of this fatal sublimation, she has only patiently to read my COTTAGE ECONOMY, written with an anxious desire to promote domestic skill and ability in that sex, on whom so much of the happiness of man must always depend. A lady in Worcestershire told me, that until she read COTTAGE ECONOMY she had never baked in the house, and had seldom had good beer; that, ever since, she had looked after both herself; that the pleasure she had derived from it, was equal to the profit, and that the latter was very great. She said, that the article 'on baking bread,' was the part that roused her to the undertaking; and, indeed, if the facts and arguments, there made use of, failed to stir her up to action, she must have been stone dead to the power of words.

328. After the age that we have now been supposing, boys and girls become men and women; and, there now only remains for the father to act towards them with impartiality. If they be numerous, or, indeed, if they be only two in number, to expect perfect harmony to reign amongst, or between, them, is to be unreasonable; because experience shows us, that, even amongst the most sober, most virtuous, and most sensible, harmony so complete is very rare. By nature they are rivals for the affection and applause of the parents; in personal and mental endowments they become rivals; and, when pecuniary interests come to be well understood and to have their weight, here is a rivalship, to prevent which from ending in hostility, require more affection and greater disinterestedness than fall to the lot of one out of one hundred families. So many instances have I witnessed of good and amiable families living in harmony, till the hour arrived for dividing property amongst them, and then, all at once, becoming hostile to each other, that I have often thought that property, coming in such a way, was a curse, and that the parties would have been far better off, had the parent had merely a blessing to bequeath them from his or her lips, instead of a will for them to dispute and wrangle over.

329. With regard to this matter, all that the father can do, is to be impartial; but, impartiality does not mean positive equality in the distribution, but equality in proportion to the different deserts of the parties, their different wants, their different pecuniary circumstances, and different prospects in life; and these vary so much, in different families, that it is impossible to lay down any general rule upon the subject. But there is one fatal error, against which every father ought to guard his heart; and the kinder that heart is, the more necessary such guardianship. I mean the fatal error of heaping upon one child, to the prejudice of the rest; or, upon a part of them. This partiality sometimes arises from mere caprice; sometimes from the circumstance of the favourite being more favoured by nature than the rest; sometimes from the nearer resemblance to himself, that the father sees in the favourite; and, sometimes, from the hope of preventing the favoured party from doing that which would disgrace the parent. All these motives are highly censurable, but the last is the most general, and by far the most mischievous in its effects. How many fathers have been ruined, how many mothers and families brought to beggary, how many industrious and virtuous groups have been pulled down from competence to penury, from the desire to prevent one from bringing shame on the parent! So that, contrary to every principle of justice, the bad is rewarded for the badness; and the good punished for the goodness. Natural affection, remembrance of infantine endearments, reluctance to abandon long-cherished hopes, compassion for the sufferings of your own flesh and blood, the dread of fatal consequences from your adhering to justice; all these beat at your heart, and call on you to give way: but, you must resist them all; or, your ruin, and that of the rest of your family, are decreed. Suffering is the natural and just punishment of idleness, drunkenness, squandering, and an indulgence in the society of prostitutes; and, never did the world behold an instance of an offender, in this way, reclaimed but by the infliction of this punishment; particularly, if the society of prostitutes made part of the offence; for, here is something that takes the heart from you. Nobody ever yet saw, and nobody ever will see, a young man, linked to a prostitute, and retain, at the same time, any, even the smallest degree of affection, for parents or brethren. You may supplicate, you may implore, you may leave yourself pennyless, and your virtuous children without bread; the invisible cormorant will still call for more; and, as we saw, only the other day, a wretch was convicted of having, at the instigation of his prostitute, beaten his aged mother, to get from her the small remains of the means necessary to provide her with food. In HERON'S collection of God's judgments on wicked acts, it is related of an unnatural son, who fed his aged father upon orts and offal, lodged him in a filthy and crazy garret, and clothed him in sackcloth, while he and his wife and children lived in luxury; that, having bought sackcloth enough for two dresses for his father, the children took away the part not made up, and hid it, and that, upon asking them what they could do this for, they told him that they meant to keep it for him, when he should become old and walk with a stick! This, the author relates, pierced his heart; and, indeed, if this failed, he must have had the heart of a tiger; but, even this would not succeed with the associate of a prostitute. When this vice, this love of the society of prostitutes; when this vice has once got fast hold, vain are all your sacrifices, vain your prayers, vain your hopes, vain your anxious desire to disguise the shame from the world; and, if you have acted well your part, no part of that shame falls on you, unless you have administered to the cause of it. Your authority has ceased; the voice of the prostitute, or the charms of the bottle, or the rattle of the dice, has been more powerful than your advice and example: you must lament this: but, it is not to bow you down; and, above all things, it is weak, and even criminally selfish, to sacrifice the rest of your family, in order to keep from the world the knowledge of that, which, if known, would, in your view of the matter, bring shame on yourself.

330. Let me hope, however, that this is a calamity which will befall very few good fathers; and that, of all such, the sober, industrious, and frugal habits of their children, their dutiful demeanor, their truth and their integrity, will come to smooth the path of their downward days, and be the objects on which their eyes will close. Those children must, in their turn, travel the same path; and they may be assured, that, 'Honour thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land,' is a precept, a disregard of which never yet failed, either first or last, to bring its punishment. And, what can be more just than that signal punishment should follow such a crime; a crime directly against the voice of nature itself? Youth has its passions, and due allowance justice will make for these; but, are the delusions of the boozer, the gamester, or the harlot, to be pleaded in excuse for a disregard of the source of your existence? Are those to be pleaded in apology for giving pain to the father who has toiled half a lifetime in order to feed and clothe you, and to the mother whose breast has been to you the fountain of life? Go, you, and shake the hand of the boon-companion; take the greedy harlot to your arms; mock at the tears of your tender and anxious parents; and, when your purse is empty and your complexion faded, receive the poverty and the scorn due to your base ingratitude!



LETTER VI

TO THE CITIZEN

331. Having now given my Advice to the YOUTH, the grown-up MAN, the LOVER, the HUSBAND and the FATHER, I shall, in this concluding Number, tender my Advice to the CITIZEN, in which capacity every man has rights to enjoy and duties to perform, and these too of importance not inferior to those which belong to him, or are imposed upon him, as son, parent, husband or father. The word citizen is not, in its application, confined to the mere inhabitants of cities: it means, a member of a civil society, or community; and, in order to have a clear comprehension of man's rights and duties in this capacity, we must take a look at the origin of civil communities.

332. Time was when the inhabitants of this island, for instance, laid claim to all things in it, without the words owner or property being known. God had given to all the people all the land and all the trees, and every thing else, just as he has given the burrows and the grass to the rabbits, and the bushes and the berries to the birds; and each man had the good things of this world in a greater or less degree in proportion to his skill, his strength and his valour. This is what is called living under the LAW OF NATURE; that is to say, the law of self-preservation and self-enjoyment, without any restraint imposed by a regard for the good of our neighbours.

333. In process of time, no matter from what cause, men made amongst themselves a compact, or an agreement, to divide the land and its products in such manner that each should have a share to his own exclusive use, and that each man should be protected in the exclusive enjoyment of his share by the united power of the rest; and, in order to ensure the due and certain application of this united power, the whole of the people agreed to be bound by regulations, called LAWS. Thus arose civil society; thus arose property; thus arose the words mine and thine. One man became possessed of more good things than another, because he was more industrious, more skilful, more careful, or more frugal: so that LABOUR, of one sort or another, was the BASIS of all property.

334. In what manner civil societies proceeded in providing for the making of laws and for the enforcing of them; the various ways in which they took measures to protect the weak against the strong; how they have gone to work to secure wealth against the attacks of poverty; these are subjects that it would require volumes to detail; but these truths are written on the heart of man: that all men are, by nature, equal; that civil society can never have arisen from any motive other than that of the benefit of the whole; that, whenever civil society makes the greater part of the people worse off than they were under the Law of Nature, the civil compact is, in conscience, dissolved, and all the rights of nature return; that, in civil society, the rights and the duties go hand in hand, and that, when the former are taken away, the latter cease to exist.

335. Now, then, in order to act well our part, as citizens, or members of the community, we ought clearly to understand what our rights are; for, on our enjoyment of these depend our duties, rights going before duties, as value received goes before payment. I know well, that just the contrary of this is taught in our political schools, where we are told, that our first duty is to obey the laws; and it is not many years ago, that HORSLEY, Bishop of Rochester, told us, that the people had nothing to do with the laws but to obey them. The truth is, however, that the citizen's first duty is to maintain his rights, as it is the purchaser's first duty to receive the thing for which he has contracted.

336. Our rights in society are numerous; the right of enjoying life and property; the right of exerting our physical and mental powers in an innocent manner; but, the great right of all, and without which there is, in fact, no right, is, the right of taking a part in the making of the laws by which we are governed. This right is founded in that law of Nature spoken of above; it springs out of the very principle of civil society; for what compact, what agreement, what common assent, can possibly be imagined by which men would give up all the rights of nature, all the free enjoyment of their bodies and their minds, in order to subject themselves to rules and laws, in the making of which they should have nothing to say, and which should be enforced upon them without their assent? The great right, therefore, of every man, the right of rights, is the right of having a share in the making of the laws, to which the good of the whole makes it his duty to submit.

337. With regard to the means of enabling every man to enjoy this share, they have been different, in different countries, and, in the same countries, at different times. Generally it has been, and in great communities it must be, by the choosing of a few to speak and act in behalf of the many: and, as there will hardly ever be perfect unanimity amongst men assembled for any purpose whatever, where fact and argument are to decide the question, the decision is left to the majority, the compact being that the decision of the majority shall be that of the whole. Minors are excluded from this right, because the law considers them as infants, because it makes the parent answerable for civil damages committed by them, and because of their legal incapacity to make any compact. Women are excluded because husbands are answerable in law for their wives, as to their civil damages, and because the very nature of their sex makes the exercise of this right incompatible with the harmony and happiness of society. Men stained with indelible crimes are excluded, because they have forfeited their right by violating the laws, to which their assent has been given. Insane persons are excluded, because they are dead in the eye of the law, because the law demands no duty at their hands, because they cannot violate the law, because the law cannot affect them; and, therefore, they ought to have no hand in making it.

338. But, with these exceptions, where is the ground whereon to maintain that any man ought to be deprived of this right, which he derives directly from the law of Nature, and which springs, as I said before, out of the same source with civil society itself? Am I told, that property ought to confer this right? Property sprang from labour, and not labour from property; so that if there were to be a distinction here, it ought to give the preference to labour. All men are equal by nature; nobody denies that they all ought to be equal in the eye of the law; but, how are they to be thus equal, if the law begin by suffering some to enjoy this right and refusing the enjoyment to others? It is the duty of every man to defend his country against an enemy, a duty imposed by the law of Nature as well as by that of civil society, and without the recognition of this duty, there could exist no independent nation and no civil society. Yet, how are you to maintain that this is the duty of every man, if you deny to some men the enjoyment of a share in making the laws? Upon what principle are you to contend for equality here, while you deny its existence as to the right of sharing in the making of the laws? The poor man has a body and a soul as well as the rich man; like the latter, he has parents, wife and children; a bullet or a sword is as deadly to him as to the rich man; there are hearts to ache and tears to flow for him as well as for the squire or the lord or the loan-monger: yet, notwithstanding this equality, he is to risk all, and, if he escape, he is still to be denied an equality of rights! If, in such a state of things, the artisan or labourer, when called out to fight in defence of his country, were to answer: 'Why should I risk my life? I have no possession but my labour; no enemy will take that from me; you, the rich, possess all the land and all its products; you make what laws you please without my participation or assent; you punish me at your pleasure; you say that my want of property excludes me from the right of having a share in the making of the laws; you say that the property that I have in my labour is nothing worth; on what ground, then, do you call on me to risk my life?' If, in such a case, such questions were put, the answer is very difficult to be imagined.

339. In cases of civil commotion the matter comes still more home to us. On what ground is the rich man to call the artisan from his shop or the labourer from the field to join the sheriff's posse or the militia, if he refuse to the labourer and artisan the right of sharing in the making of the laws? Why are they to risk their lives here? To uphold the laws, and to protect property. What! laws, in the making of, or assenting to, which they have been allowed to have no share? Property, of which they are said to possess none? What! compel men to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property; and then, in the same breath, tell them, that they are not allowed to share in the making of the laws, because, and ONLY BECAUSE, they have no property! Not because they have committed any crime; not because they are idle or profligate; not because they are vicious in any way; out solely because they have no property; and yet, at the same time, compel them to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property!

340. But, the PAUPERS? Ought they to share in the making of the laws? And why not? What is a pauper; what is one of the men to whom this degrading appellation is applied? A very poor man; a man who is, from some cause or other, unable to supply himself with food and raiment without aid from the parish-rates. And, is that circumstance alone to deprive him of his right, a right of which he stands more in need than any other man? Perhaps he has, for many years of his life, contributed directly to those rates; and ten thousand to one he has, by his labour, contributed to them indirectly. The aid which, under such circumstances, he receives, is his right; he receives it not as an alms: he is no mendicant; he begs not; he comes to receive that which the law of the country awards him in lieu of the larger portion assigned him by the law of Nature. Pray mark that, and let it be deeply engraven on your memory. The audacious and merciless MALTHUS (a parson of the church establishment) recommended, some years ago, the passing of a law to put an end to the giving of parish relief, though he recommended no law to put an end to the enormous taxes paid by poor people. In his book he said, that the poor should be left to the law of Nature, which, in case of their having nothing to buy food with, doomed them to starve. They would ask nothing better than to be left to the law of Nature; that law which knows nothing about buying food or any thing else; that law which bids the hungry and the naked take food and raiment wherever they find it best and nearest at hand; that law which awards all possessions to the strongest; that law the operations of which would clear out the London meat-markets and the drapers' and jewellers' shops in about half an hour: to this law the parson wished the parliament to leave the poorest of the working people; but, if the parliament had done it, it would have been quickly seen, that this law was far from 'dooming them to be starved.'

341. Trusting that it is unnecessary for me to express a hope, that barbarous thoughts like those of Malthus and his tribe will never be entertained by any young man who has read the previous Numbers of this work, let me return to my very, very poor man, and ask, whether it be consistent with justice, with humanity, with reason, to deprive a man of the most precious of his political rights, because, and only because, he has been, in a pecuniary way, singularly unfortunate? The Scripture says, 'Despise not the poor, because he is poor;' that is to say, despise him not on account of his poverty. Why, then, deprive him of his right; why put him out of the pale of the law, on account of his poverty? There are some men, to be sure, who are reduced to poverty by their vices, by idleness, by gaming, by drinking, by squandering; but, the far greater part by bodily ailments, by misfortunes to the effects of which all men may, without any fault, and even without any folly, be exposed: and, is there a man on earth so cruelly unjust as to wish to add to the sufferings of such persons by stripping them of their political rights? How many thousands of industrious and virtuous men have, within these few years, been brought down from a state of competence to that of pauperism! And, is it just to strip such men of their rights, merely because they are thus brought down? When I was at ELY, last spring, there were in that neighbourhood, three paupers cracking stones on the roads, who had all three been, not only rate-payers, but overseers of the poor, within seven years of the day when I was there. Is there any man so barbarous as to say, that these men ought, merely on account of their misfortunes, to be deprived of their political rights? Their right to receive relief is as perfect as any right of property; and, would you, merely because they claim this right, strip them of another right? To say no more of the injustice and the cruelty, is there reason, is there common sense in this? What! if a farmer or tradesman be, by flood or by fire, so totally ruined as to be compelled, surrounded by his family, to resort to the parish-book, would you break the last heart-string of such a man by making him feel the degrading loss of his political rights?

342. Here, young man of sense and of spirit; here is the point on which you are to take your stand. There are always men enough to plead the cause of the rich; enough and enough to echo the woes of the fallen great; but, be it your part to show compassion for those who labour, and to maintain their rights. Poverty is not a crime, and, though it sometimes arises from faults, it is not, even in that case, to be visited by punishment beyond that which it brings with itself. Remember, that poverty is decreed by the very nature of man. The Scripture says, that 'the poor shall never cease from out of the land;' that is to say, that there shall always be some very poor people. This is inevitable from the very nature of things. It is necessary to the existence of mankind, that a very large portion of every people should live by manual labour; and, as such labour is pain, more or less, and as no living creature likes pain, it must be, that the far greater part of labouring people will endure only just as much of this pain as is absolutely necessary to the supply of their daily wants. Experience says that this has always been, and reason and nature tell us, that this must always be. Therefore, when ailments, when losses, when untoward circumstances of any sort, stop or diminish the daily supply, want comes; and every just government will provide, from the general stock, the means to satisfy this want.

343. Nor is the deepest poverty without its useful effects in society. To the practice of the virtues of abstinence, sobriety, care, frugality, industry, and even honesty and amiable manners and acquirement of talent, the two great motives are, to get upwards in riches or fame, and to avoid going downwards to poverty, the last of which is the most powerful of the two. It is, therefore, not with contempt, but with compassion, that we should look on those, whose state is one of the decrees of nature, from whose sad example we profit, and to whom, in return, we ought to make compensation by every indulgent and kind act in our power, and particularly by a defence of their rights. To those who labour, we, who labour not with our hands, owe all that we eat, drink and wear; all that shades us by day and that shelters us by night; all the means of enjoying health and pleasure; and, therefore, if we possess talent for the task, we are ungrateful or cowardly, or both, if we omit any effort within our power to prevent them from being slaves; and, disguise the matter how we may, a slave, a real slave, every man is, who has no share in making the laws which he is compelled to obey.

344. What is a slave? For, let us not be amused by a name; but look well into the matter. A slave is, in the first place, a man who has no property; and property means something that he has, and that nobody can take from him without his leave, or consent. Whatever man, no matter what he may call himself or any body else may call him, can have his money or his goods taken from him by force, by virtue of an order, or ordinance, or law, which he has had no hand in making, and to which he has not given his assent, has no property, and is merely a depositary of the goods of his master. A slave has no property in his labour; and any man who is compelled to give up the fruit of his labour to another, at the arbitrary will of that other, has no property in his labour, and is, therefore, a slave, whether the fruit of his labour be taken from him directly or indirectly. If it be said, that he gives up this fruit of his labour by his own will, and that it is not forced from him. I answer, To be sure he may avoid eating and drinking and may go naked; but, then he must die; and on this condition, and this condition only, can he refuse to give up the fruit of his labour; 'Die, wretch, or surrender as much of your income, or the fruit of your labour as your masters choose to take.' This is, in fact, the language of the rulers to every man who is refused to have a share in the making of the laws to which he is forced to submit.

345. But, some one may say, slaves are private property, and may be bought and sold, out and out, like cattle. And, what is it to the slave, whether he be property of one or of many; or, what matters it to him, whether he pass from master to master by a sale for an indefinite term, or be let to hire by the year, month, or week? It is, in no case, the flesh and blood and bones that are sold, but the labour; and, if you actually sell the labour of man, is not that man a slave, though you sell it for only a short time at once? And, as to the principle, so ostentatiously displayed in the case of the black slave-trade, that 'man ought not to have a property in man,' it is even an advantage to the slave to be private property, because the owner has then a clear and powerful interest in the preservation of his life, health and strength, and will, therefore, furnish him amply with the food and raiment necessary for these ends. Every one knows, that public property is never so well taken care of as private property; and this, too, on the maxim, that 'that which is every body's business is nobody's business.' Every one knows that a rented farm is not so well kept in heart, as a farm in the hands of the owner. And as to punishments and restraints, what difference is there, whether these be inflicted and imposed by a private owner, or his overseer, or by the agents and overseers of a body of proprietors? In short, if you can cause a man to be imprisoned or whipped if he do not work enough to please you; if you can sell him by auction for a time limited; if you can forcibly separate him from his wife to prevent their having children; if you can shut him up in his dwelling place when you please, and for as long a time as you please; if you can force him to draw a cart or wagon like a beast of draught; if you can, when the humour seizes you, and at the suggestion of your mere fears, or whim, cause him to be shut up in a dungeon during your pleasure: if you can, at your pleasure, do these things to him, is it not to be impudently hypocritical to affect to call him a free-man? But, after all, these may all be wanting, and yet the man be a slave, if he be allowed to have no property; and, as I have shown, no property he can have, not even in that labour, which is not only property, but the basis of all other property, unless he have a share in making the laws to which he is compelled to submit.

346. It is said, that he may have this share virtually though not in form and name; for that his employers may have such share, and they will, as a matter of course, act for him. This doctrine, pushed home, would make the chief of the nation the sole maker of the laws; for, if the rich can thus act for the poor, why should not the chief act for the rich? This matter is very completely explained by the practice in the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. There the maxim is, that every free man, with the exception of men stained with crime and men insane, has a right to have a voice in choosing those who make the laws. The number of Representatives sent to the Congress is, in each State, proportioned to the number of free people. But, as there are slaves in some of the States, these States have a certain portion of additional numbers on account of those slaves! Thus the slaves are represented by their owners, and this is real, practical, open and undisguised virtual representation! No doubt that white men may be represented in the same way; for the colour of the skin is nothing; but let them be called slaves, then; let it not be pretended that they are free men; let not the word liberty be polluted by being applied to their state; let it be openly and honestly avowed, as in America, that they are slaves; and then will come the question whether men ought to exist in such a state, or whether they ought to do every thing in their power to rescue themselves from it.

347. If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather; if it were a fanciful thing; if it were only a speculative theory; if it were but an abstract principle; on any of these suppositions, it might be considered as of little importance. But it is none of these; it is a practical matter; the want of it not only is, but must of necessity be, felt by every man who lives under that want. If it were proposed to the shopkeepers in a town, that a rich man or two, living in the neighbourhood, should have power to send, whenever they pleased, and take away as much as they pleased of the money of the shopkeepers, and apply it to what uses they please; what an outcry the shopkeepers would make! And yet, what would this be more than taxes imposed on those who have no voice in choosing the persons who impose them? Who lets another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases? Who, that has the power to help himself, surrenders his goods or his money to the will of another? Has it not always been, and must it not always be, true, that, if your property be at the absolute disposal of others, your ruin is certain? And if this be, of necessity, the case amongst individuals and parts of the community, it must be the case with regard to the whole community.

348. Aye, and experience shows us that it always has been the case. The natural and inevitable consequences of a want of this right in the people have, in all countries, been taxes pressing the industrious and laborious to the earth; severe laws and standing armies to compel the people to submit to those taxes; wealth, luxury, and splendour, amongst those who make the laws and receive the taxes; poverty, misery, immorality and crime, amongst those who bear the burdens; and at last commotion, revolt, revenge, and rivers of blood. Such have always been, and such must always be, the consequences of a want of this right of all men to share in the making of the laws, a right, as I have before shown, derived immediately from the law of Nature, springing up out of the same source with civil society, and cherished in the heart of man by reason and by experience.

349. Well, then, this right being that, without the enjoyment of which there is, in reality, no right at all, how manifestly is it the first duty of every man to do all in his power to maintain this right where it exists, and to restore it where it has been lost? For observe, it must, at one time, have existed in every civil community, it being impossible that it could ever be excluded by any social compact; absolutely impossible, because it is contrary to the law of self-preservation to believe, that men would agree to give up the rights of nature without stipulating for some benefit. Before we can affect to believe that this right was not reserved, in such compact, as completely as the right to live was reserved, we must affect to believe, that millions of men, under no control but that of their own passions and desires, and having all the earth and its products at the command of their strength and skill, consented to be for ever, they and their posterity, the slaves of a few.

350. We cannot believe this, and therefore, without going back into history and precedents, we must believe, that, in whatever civil community this right does not exist, it has been lost, or rather, unjustly taken away. And then, having seen the terrible evils which always have arisen, and always must arise, from the want of it; being convinced that, where lost or taken away by force or fraud, it is our very first duty to do all in our power to restore it, the next consideration is, how one ought to act in the discharge of this most sacred duty; for sacred it is even as the duties of husband and father. For, besides the baseness of the thought of quietly submitting to be a slave oneself, we have here, besides our duty to the community, a duty to perform towards our children and our children's children. We all acknowledge that it is our bounden duty to provide, as far as our power will go, for the competence, the health, and the good character of our children; but, is this duty superior to that of which I am now speaking? What is competence, what is health, if the possessor be a slave, and hold his possessions at the will of another, or others; as he must do if destitute of the right to a share in the making of the laws? What is competence, what is health, if both can, at any moment, be snatched away by the grasp or the dungeon of a master; and his master he is who makes the laws without his participation or assent? And, as to character, as to fair fame, when the white slave puts forward pretensions to those, let him no longer affect to commiserate the state of his sleek and fat brethren in Barbadoes and Jamaica; let him hasten to mix the hair with the wool, to blend the white with the black, and to lose the memory of his origin amidst a dingy generation.

351. Such, then, being the nature of the duty, how are we to go to work in the performance of it, and what are our means? With regard to these, so various are the circumstances, so endless the differences in the states of society, and so many are the cases when it would be madness to attempt that which it would be prudence to attempt in others, that no general rule can be given beyond this; that, the right and the duty being clear to our minds, the means that are surest and swiftest are the best. In every such case, however, the great and predominant desire ought to be not to employ any means beyond those of reason and persuasion, as long as the employment of these afford a ground for rational expectation of success. Men are, in such a case, labouring, not for the present day only, but for ages to come; and therefore they should not slacken in their exertions, because the grave may close upon them before the day of final triumph arrive. Amongst the virtues of the good Citizen are those of fortitude and patience; and, when he has to carry on his struggle against corruptions deep and widely-rooted, he is not to expect the baleful tree to come down at a single blow; he must patiently remove the earth that props and feeds it, and sever the accursed roots one by one.

352. Impatience here is a very bad sign. I do not like your patriots, who, because the tree does not give way at once, fall to blaming all about them, accuse their fellow-sufferers of cowardice, because they do not do that which they themselves dare not think of doing. Such conduct argues chagrin and disappointment; and these argue a selfish feeling: they argue, that there has been more of private ambition and gain at work than of public good. Such blamers, such general accusers, are always to be suspected. What does the real patriot want more than to feel conscious that he has done his duty towards his country; and that, if life should not allow him time to see his endeavours crowned with success, his children will see it? The impatient patriots are like the young men (mentioned in the beautiful fable of LA FONTAINE) who ridiculed the man of fourscore, who was planting an avenue of very small trees, which, they told him, that he never could expect to see as high as his head. 'Well,' said he, 'and what of that? If their shade afford me no pleasure, it may afford pleasure to my children, and even to you; and, therefore, the planting of them gives me pleasure.'

353. It is the want of the noble disinterestedness, so beautifully expressed in this fable, that produces the impatient patriots. They wish very well to their country, because they want some of the good for themselves. Very natural that all men should wish to see the good arrive, and wish to share in it too; but, we must look on the dark side of nature to find the disposition to cast blame on the whole community because our wishes are not instantly accomplished, and especially to cast blame on others for not doing that which we ourselves dare not attempt. There is, however, a sort of patriot a great deal worse than this; he, who having failed himself, would see his country enslaved for ever, rather than see its deliverance achieved by others. His failure has, perhaps, arisen solely from his want of talent, or discretion; yet his selfish heart would wish his country sunk in everlasting degradation, lest his inefficiency for the task should be established by the success of others. A very hateful character, certainly, but, I am sorry to say, by no means rare. Envy, always associated with meanness of soul, always detestable, is never so detestable as when it shows itself here.

354. Be it your care, my young friend (and I tender you this as my parting advice), if you find this base and baleful passion, which the poet calls 'the eldest born of hell;' if you find it creeping into your heart, be it your care to banish it at once and for ever; for, if once it nestle there, farewell to all the good which nature has enabled you to do, and to your peace into the bargain. It has pleased God to make an unequal distribution of talent, of industry, of perseverance, of a capacity to labour, of all the qualities that give men distinction. We have not been our own makers: it is no fault in you that nature has placed him above you, and, surely, it is no fault in him; and would you punish him on account, and only on account, of his pre-eminence! If you have read this book you will startle with horror at the thought: you will, as to public matters, act with zeal and with good humour, though the place you occupy be far removed from the first; you will support with the best of your abilities others, who, from whatever circumstance, may happen to take the lead; you will not suffer even the consciousness and the certainty of your own superior talents to urge you to do any thing which might by possibility be injurious to your country's cause; you will be forbearing under the aggressions of ignorance, conceit, arrogance, and even the blackest of ingratitude superadded, if by resenting these you endanger the general good; and, above all things, you will have the justice to bear in mind, that that country which gave you birth, is, to the last hour of your capability, entitled to your exertions in her behalf, and that you ought not, by acts of commission or of omission, to visit upon her the wrongs which may have been inflicted on you by the envy and malice of individuals. Love of one's native soil is a feeling which nature has implanted in the human breast, and that has always been peculiarly strong in the breasts of Englishmen. God has given us a country of which to be proud, and that freedom, greatness and renown, which were handed down to us by our wise and brave forefathers, bid us perish to the last man, rather than suffer the land of their graves to become a land of slavery, impotence and dishonour.

355. In the words with which I concluded my English Grammar, which I addressed to my son James, I conclude my advice to you. 'With English and French on your tongue and in your pen, you have a resource, not only greatly valuable in itself, but a resource that you can be deprived of by none of those changes and chances which deprive men of pecuniary possessions, and which, in some cases, make the purse-proud man of yesterday a crawling sycophant to-day. Health, without which life is not worth having, you will hardly fail to secure by early rising, exercise, sobriety, and abstemiousness as to food. Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the mind that lives; and the length of life ought to be measured by the number and importance of our ideas, and not by the number of our days. Never, therefore, esteem men merely on account of their riches or their station. Respect goodness, find it where you may. Honour talent wherever you behold it unassociated with vice; but, honour it most when accompanied with exertion, and especially when exerted in the cause of truth and justice; and, above all things, hold it in honour, when it steps forward to protect defenceless innocence against the attacks of powerful guilt.' These words, addressed to my own son, I now, in taking my leave, address to you. Be just, be industrious, be sober, and be happy; and the hope that these effects will, in some degree, have been caused by this little work, will add to the happiness of

Your friend and humble servant,

WM. COBBETT.

Kensington, 25th Aug. 1830.

THE END