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CURSORY REMARKS

Clive

ON A

RECENT PUBLICATION,

ADDRESSED TO THE PUBLIC,

UPON THE

DANGEROUS TENDENCY

OF THE

London Female Penitentiary,

&c. &c.

BY JUVENIS.

"Vice parries wide

Th' undreaded volley with a sword of straw,
And stands an impudent and fearless mark."

COWPER.

LONDON:

Printed by Townsend, Powell, & Co. Crane Court, Fleet Street,
AND SOLD BY WILLIAMS AND SMITH, STATIONERS
COURT, AND CONDER, BUCKLERSBURY,

24729

1809.

28

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CURSORY REMARKS,

&c. &c.

THE HE perusal of a pamphlet lately published, entitled, "An Address to the Public upon the dangerous Tendency of the London Female Penitentiary," created in my mind mingled sensations of surprise and regret, that an individual of charac ter, experience, and influence, should have interposed a barrier to the progressive usefulness of an institution purposed, by its founders, to relieve the miseries of an unhappy class of females, and to operate as some check to their hitherto unrestrained profligacy.

It is an ancient adage, the truth of

which at once strikes our senses, that old prejudices, and young experience, are two difficult things to oppose with success: the first, rooted in the mind by particular bias of the feelings, or long habits, is too firmly fixed to be easily supplanted by other principles, without considerable violence to that vanity and self-sufficiency so universally predominant in the human heart; the latter, the attendant on minds as yet unrestrained by disappointment, or matured by knowledge and practice in the sophistry of the world, and confident of the fitness of their conceptions merely from innate feelings and impulses, which too often cloud the judgment, and cramp its reasoning faculties.

Although the writer of these remarks is not yet fettered with the prejudices of riper years, he has not attained that solid

ity of experience which, in the estimation of many persons, would render him competent to argue a case of the present importance, against that weight of expe rience and ingenuity displayed by Mr. Hale. I have, however, in this cause taken up my pen with considerable satisfaction, to endeavour to counteract the sentiments advanced in the Address; with what pretensions to the patronage of the public, or benefit to the cause I espouse, must be left to time to develop: but from this I derive no small degree of encouragement, that if in error, it is on the side of humanity, in endeavouring to oppose the injury which might accrue to that benevolent Institution, whose interests I wish to contribute my humble efforts to consolidate, and whose usefulness I wish to see extended...:

The author of the Address remarks, in

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