ou, nor a sinecure to me. The sooner you make it both, the better for us
both. I can now exercise this employment only upon hearsay, or, at most,
written evidence; and therefore shall exercise it with great lenity and
some diffidence; but when we meet, and that I can form my judgment upon
ocular and auricular evidence, I shall no more let the least impropriety,
indecorum, or irregularity pass uncensured, than my predecessor Cato did.
I shall read you with the attention of a critic, not with the partiality
of an author: different in this respect, indeed, from most critics, that
I shall seek for faults only to correct and not to expose them. I have
often thought, and still think, that there are few things which people in
general know less, than how to love and how to hate. They hurt those they
love by a mistaken indulgence, by a blindness, nay, often by a partiality
to their faults. Where they hate they hurt themselves, by ill-timed
passion and rage. Fortunately for you, I never loved you in that mistaken
manner. From your infancy, I made you the object of my most serious
attention, and not my plaything. I consulted your real good, not your
humors or fancies; and I shall continue to do so while you want it, which
will probably be the case during our joint lives; for, considering the
difference of our ages, in the course of nature, you will hardly have
acquired experience enough of your own, while I shall be in condition of
lending you any of mine. People in general will much better bear being,
told of their vices or crimes, than of their little failings and
weaknesses. They, in some degree, justify or excuse (as they think) the
former, by strong passions, seductions, and artifices of others, but to
be told of, or to confess, their little failings and weaknesses, implies
an inferiority of parts, too mortifying to that self-love and vanity,
which are inseparable from our natures. I have been intimate enough with
several people to tell them that they had said or done a very criminal
thing; but I never was intimate enough with any man, to tell him, very
seriously, that he had said or done a very foolish one. Nothing less than
the relation between you and me can possibly authorize that freedom; but
fortunately for you, my parental rights, joined to my censorial powers,
give it me in its fullest extent, and my concern for you will make me
exert it. Rejoice, therefore, that there is one person in the world who
can and will tell you