who
do well or ill in the world owe it to the manner in which they have
been brought up in their early days.

It follows, from this general rule, that parents should carefully avoid
bringing up children in a manner in which they have not the means of
being afterwards maintained; and that, in the second place, when they
cannot leave them in an independent fortune, they should, by making
them learn a trade or profession, give them the means of obtaining
what they have been accustomed to consider as necessary for them to
enjoy.

There are, indeed, great numbers, and the greatest numbers of all;
unable even to have their children taught what is called a trade. But
there are none whom poverty prevents from bringing their children up
to industry; and, if they have been taught to live according to their
situation, they will find themselves above their wants, and therefore
the same general rule will still apply.

Most writers have considered the subject of education as relative to
that portion of it only which applies to learning; but the first object
of all, in every nation, is to make a man a good member of society; and
this can never be done, unless he is fitted to fill the situation of
life for which he is intended.

Governments and writers on education fall, generally speaking, into
the same errors. They would provide for the education of persons
destined for the learned professions and sometimes for the fine arts;
but agriculture, commerce, and manufactures, are totally left out: {86}
the most essential, the most generally useful, are not noticed at all.

As so much value is set upon the language of the Greeks and Romans,
surely we might pay a little attention to the example of those
distinguished nations.

The Greeks studied the Egyptian learning, and improved upon it; but
this was only confined to those who followed learning as a profes-

---
{86} Lord Somerville has some excellent observations, relative to
this, in his publication on Agriculture, published in 1800.
-=-

[end of page #98]

sion, or whose means allowed them to prosecute it as a study. The
common education of citizens was different; it consisted in teaching
them to perform what was useful, and to esteem what was excellent. It
was a principle with them that all men ought to know how happiness
is attained, and in what virtue consists; but they neither trusted to
precept nor example. They enforced by habit and practice, and in this
the Romans f