her
sees in the favourite; and, sometimes, from the hope of preventing the
favoured party from doing that which would disgrace the parent. All
these motives are highly censurable, but the last is the most general,
and by far the most mischievous in its effects. How many fathers have
been ruined, how many mothers and families brought to beggary, how many
industrious and virtuous groups have been pulled down from competence to
penury, from the desire to prevent one from bringing shame on the
parent! So that, contrary to every principle of justice, the bad is
rewarded for the badness; and the good punished for the goodness.
Natural affection, remembrance of infantine endearments, reluctance to
abandon long-cherished hopes, compassion for the sufferings of your own
flesh and blood, the dread of fatal consequences from your adhering to
justice; all these beat at your heart, and call on you to give way: but,
you must resist them all; or, your ruin, and that of the rest of your
family, are decreed. Suffering is the natural and just punishment of
idleness, drunkenness, squandering, and an indulgence in the society of
prostitutes; and, never did the world behold an instance of an offender,
in this way, reclaimed but by the infliction of this punishment;
particularly, if the society of prostitutes made part of the offence;
for, here is something that takes the _heart from you_. Nobody ever yet
saw, and nobody ever will see, a young man, linked to a prostitute, and
retain, at the same time, any, even the smallest degree of affection,
for parents or brethren. You may supplicate, you may implore, you may
leave yourself pennyless, and your virtuous children without bread; the
invisible cormorant will still call for more; and, as we saw, only the
other day, a wretch was convicted of having, at the instigation of his
prostitute, _beaten his aged mother_, to get from her the small remains
of the means necessary to provide her with food. In HERON'S collection
of God's judgments on wicked acts, it is related of an unnatural son,
who fed his aged father upon orts and offal, lodged him in a filthy and
crazy garret, and clothed him in sackcloth, while he and his wife and
children lived in luxury; that, having bought sackcloth enough for two
dresses for his father, the children took away the part not made up, and
_hid it_, and that, upon asking them what they could _do this for_, they
told him that they meant to keep it _for him_, when he shoul