aking truth. The education, and custom, and situation
of servants, are at present such, that it is morally impossible to
depend upon their veracity in their intercourse with children.
Servants think it good natured to try to excuse and conceal all the
little faults of children; to give them secret indulgences, and even
positively to deny facts, in order to save them from blame or
punishment. Even when they are not fond of the children, their example
must be dangerous, because servants do not scruple to falsify for
their own advantage; if they break any thing, what a multitude of
equivocations! If they neglect any thing, what a variety of excuses!
What evasions in actions, or in words, do they continually invent!

It may be said, that as the Spartans taught their children to detest
drunkenness, by showing them intoxicated Helots, we can make falsehood
odious and contemptible to our pupils, by the daily example of its
mean deformity. But if children, before they can perceive the general
advantage of integrity, and before they can understand the utility of
truth, see the partial immediate success of falsehood, how can they
avoid believing in their own experience? If they see that servants
escape blame, and screen themselves from punishment, by telling
falsehoods, they not only learn that falsehood preserves from pain,
but they feel obliged to those who practise it for their sakes; thus
it is connected with the feelings of affection and of gratitude in
their hearts, as well as with a sense of pleasure and safety. When
servants have exacted promises from their _proteges_, those promises
cannot be broken without treachery; thus deceit brings on deceit, and
the ideas of truth and falsehood, become confused and contradictory.
In the chapter upon servants, we have expatiated upon this subject,
and have endeavoured to point out how all communication between
children and servants may be most effectually prevented. To that
chapter, without further repetition, we refer. And now that we have
adjusted the preliminaries concerning parents and servants, we may
proceed with confidence.

When young children first begin to speak, from not having a sufficient
number of words to express their ideas, or from not having annexed
precise ideas to the words which they are taught to use, they
frequently make mistakes, which are attributed to the desire of
deceiving. We should not precipitately suspect them of falsehood; it
is some time before th