by the best and most pleasing motive, and may rely always with entire confidence on your good intentions towards him.

But ftill it may not be advisable to make him too fenfible of his power, left he should be tempted to abuse it. When you have fuffered him upon a few trials to carry off the victory, against all reafon, merely by his importunity; innocent and harmless as you think him, he will feel his own importance, and with a wanton frowardness have recourfe to it continually; imperious in his illegitimate authority; a tyrant, as well as an usurper. Till at last, not wholly without cause, though with prodigious ingratitude, he may impute to you all the calamities that follow; upbraiding you with your excess of tenderness, and lamenting in his greatest misery, not fo much his own obftinate ungovernable paffions, as the weak and fatal condefcenfion of you, who fhould have ruled him.

But

159

But though restraint and difcipline be abfolutely neceffary for all young perfons without exception, yet the fame discipline will not be proper for all. It is to be accommodated in the degree, and duration, to their difpofition, age, sex, and other confiderations. All the hardships and refusals they are obliged to fubmit to, not only must be neceffary for fome good end, but should appear to be so, if posfible, to themselves. Ruled they must be, or they are ruined; but it fhould be by reafon. Paffion must fhew itself with an ill grace, and ill effect, in the cultivation of morals; which confifts so very much in the restraint and government of the paffions.

Correction is a part of discipline, and comes under the fame rules. Solomon has expreffed the neceffity of it in strong Prov. xiii. terms: He that spareth the rod, hateth his Jon. But though you have recourse fometimes even to this token of your

24.

displeasure; it will be with moderation, with temper, after the ineffectual ufe of other applications, and with a real, and an apparent unwillingness.

As paffion is improper in the government of children, so is partiality. It is obferved of fome parents, that they divide their kindness with a very unequal hand, treating their children with a groundless and disagreeable diftinction: infomuch that of the one parent it is become almost a proverbial faying, that the worst fon is the favourite. It will not however follow, that he has the beft ufage: Indulgence may not prove fo. But this cenfure of the partiality of the mother is perhaps rather fevere: for if to an equal stock of original affection for all her fons, you add, what is so nearly akin to love, pity, of which profligate children will be often the proper objects; and fear, which they will always excite; what wonder that the fenfation is quickened; and fuch tokens L

VOL. II.

of

of tenderness discovered, as are only to be drawn forth by calamities and danger?

The maintenance of children is to be. fuited to the station they are likely to appear in, and the abilities of the parents. There is a fault both in the excess and defect; and the confequences of either, may be bad. Yet the rich, methinks, fhould not be excufed from fome good degree of bodily exercife, if their conftitution will bear it; nor the pooreft left utterly without all learning, if their capacity will receive it.

I must not omit, that the fear of God, and fome inftruction in the Christian Religion, a regard to truth and honefty, and a habit of diligence, are indifpenfably neceffary to all, even the poorest children; and I could add, I doubt, that they are very little taught them.

For the diftribution of your fubftance

you

you are not to be called to account too ftrictly: What you have to leave behind you, is not to be demanded even by your children as a debt; that part especially, which is of your own acquifition. You will confider however the customs, as well as laws of your country; what will be generally thought right, and what yourfelves fhall be likely to approve at your laft hour, that your own heart may not then condemn you.

Yet is it not intended to counfel you to an immediate and final difpofal of what you have, even to your children: It is one thing to arrange, and another to alienate. This latter is not generally thought advisable. Gratitude is not found so strong a principle, as expecta tion. And the parent, that would be fure of his children's obedience, muft not only have been very kind to them, but keep it in his power to be fo ftill. The wife fon of Sirach is uncommonly earnest upon this

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