will submit themselves to our peremptory decisions, in the same spirit as they submit to the laws of inanimate necessity.

It were to be wished that no human creature were obliged to do any thing but from the dictates of his own understanding. But this seems to be, for the present at least, impracticable in the education of youth. If we cannot avoid some exercise of empire and despotism, all that remains for us is, that we take care that it be not exercised with asperity, and that we do not add an insulting familiarity or unnecessary contention, to the indispensible assertion of superiority.

ESSAY XII.

OF DECEPTION AND FRANKNESS.

THERE is no conduct in the education of youth more pernicious in its consequences, than the practice of deception.

It cuts off all generous reciprocity between children and persons of mature age. It generates a suspicious temper, which, instead of confiding in your demonstrations and assertions, exercises itself in perpetual watchfulness, expecting continually to detect your insincerity.

It teaches our children the practice of similar arts, and, as they have been overreached by their superiors, to endeavour to overreach them in return. What can be more unjust than the conduct of those parents, who, while they pride themselves in the ingenuity with which they deceive their children, express the utmost severity and displeasure, when their children attempt a reprisal, and are detected in schemes of similar adroitness?

It would be a useful task to enumerate the various sorts of deception which it is the custom of ordinary education successively to impose upon its subjects.

The practice of deception is one of those vices of education that are most early introduced into the treatment of youth.

If the nurse find a difficulty in persuading the child to go to sleep, she will pretend to go to sleep along with it. If the parent wish his youngest son to go to bed before his brothers, he will order the elder ones up stairs, with a permission to return as soon as they can do it unobserved. If the mother is going out for a walk or a visit, she will order the child upon some pretended occasion to a distant part of the house, till she has made her escape.

It is a deception too gross to be insisted on, to threaten children with pretended punishments, that you will cut off their ears; that you will put

them into the well; that you will give them to the old man; that there is somebody coming down the chimney to take them away.

There is a passage in the Bible that seems to be of this sort, where it is said, "The eye that mocketh at his father, and despiseth to obey his mother, the ravens of the valley shall pick it out, and the young eagles shall eat it *."

1

This infantine doctrine respecting the punishment of misdemeanour, is succeeded by another, which, though less gross, is equally pernicious. This is, whenever we utter any lessons of pretended morality, which have been taken up by us upon trust, and not duly considered. There is in the world a long established jargon of this kind, sufficiently adapted to terrify those, who are to be terrified by a repetition of well sounding words. It generally happens however that, after the first stage of human life is concluded, this sort of morality appears sufficiently adapted for every body's use, but our own.

Nothing can be more subversive of true morality, of genuine principle and integrity, than this empty and unmeaning cant. Morality has a foundation in the nature of things, has reasons too strong for sophistry to shake, or any future improvement of human understanding to undermine.

* Proverbs, Ch. xxx. ver. 17.

But this rotten morality will not abide the slightest impartial examination; and when it is removed, the dissipated and thoughtless imagine they have detected the fallacy of every thing that bears the much injured name of morality.

It has been remarked that there is a commonplace sort of consolation for distress, which sounds sufficiently specious in the ears of men at ease, but appears unsatisfactory and almost insulting to those who stand in need of consolation. The like remark might be extended to every branch of morality.

If I would dissuade a man from drunkenness, gaming, or any other vice, nothing can be more incumbent upon me, than to examine carefully its temptations and consequences, and afterwards to describe them with simplicity and truth. I ought not to utter a word upon the subject that is not pregnant with meaning. I should take it for granted that the person with whom I expostulate is a rational being, and that there are strong considerations and reasons that have led him to his present conduct. Morality is nothing more than a calculation of pleasures; nothing therefore which is connected with pleasurable sensation, can be foreign to, or ought to be despised in, a question of morality. If I`utter in perspicuous language the genuine deductions of my understanding, and results of my reflection, it is scarcely in human na

ture that I shall not obtain an attentive hearing. But there is a common-place language upon subjects of morality, vague and undefined in its meaning, embracing some truth, but full of absurd prejudice, which cannot produce much effect upon the hearer. It has been repeated a thousand times; it has been delivered down from age to age; and instead of being, what all morality ought to be, an impressive appeal to the strongest and most unalterable sentiments of the human heart, is the heaviest and most tedious homily that ever insulted human patience.

Nothing tends more effectually to poison morality in its source in the minds of youth, than the practice of holding one language, and laying down one set of precepts, for the observation of the young, and another of the adult. You fall into this error if, for instance, you require your chil dren to go to church and neglect going yourself, if you teach them to say their prayers as a badge of their tender years, if they find that there are certain books which they may not read, and certain conversations they may not hear.

The usual mode of treating young persons, will often be found to suggest to children of ardent fancy and inquisitive remark, a question, a sort of floating and undefined reverie, as to whether the whole scene of things played before them be not a