f
Stone.

It is wholly to this dreadful Practice that we may attribute a certain
Hardiness and Ferocity which some Men, tho' liberally educated, carry
about them in all their Behaviour. To be bred like a Gentleman, and
punished like a Malefactor, must, as we see it does, produce that
illiberal Sauciness which we see sometimes in Men of Letters.

The _Spartan_ Boy who suffered the Fox (which he had stolen and hid
under his Coat) to eat into his Bowels, I dare say had not half the Wit
or Petulance which we learn at great Schools among us: But the glorious
Sense of Honour, or rather Fear of Shame, which he demonstrated in that
Action, was worth all the Learning in the World without it.

It is methinks a very melancholy Consideration, that a little Negligence
can spoil us, but great Industry is necessary to improve us; the most
excellent Natures are soon depreciated, but evil Tempers are long before
they are exalted into good Habits. To help this by Punishments, is the
same thing as killing a Man to cure him of a Distemper; when he comes to
suffer Punishment in that one Circumstance, he is brought below the
Existence of a rational Creature, and is in the State of a Brute that
moves only by the Admonition of Stripes. But since this Custom of
educating by the Lash is suffered by the Gentry of _Great Britain _, I
would prevail only that honest heavy Lads may be dismissed from Slavery
sooner than they are at present, and not whipped on to their fourteenth
or fifteenth Year, whether they expect any Progress from them or not.
Let the Child's Capacity be forthwith examined and [he] sent to some
Mechanick Way of Life, without respect to his Birth, if Nature designed
him for nothing higher: let him go before he has innocently suffered,
and is debased into a Dereliction of Mind for being what it is no Guilt
to be, a plain Man. I would not here be supposed to have said, that our
learned Men of either Robe who have been whipped at School, are not
still Men of noble and liberal Minds; but I am sure they had been much
more so than they are, had they never suffered that Infamy.

But tho' there is so little Care, as I have observed, taken, or
Observation made of the natural Strain of Men, it is no small Comfort to
me, as a SPECTATOR, that there is any right Value set upon the _bona
Indoles_ of other Animals; as appears by the following Advertisement
handed about the County of _Lincoln _, and subscribed by _Enos Thomas_,
a Person w