Without this foundation firft laid, how much kindness in the progress of a benevolent man's life is unavoidably cast away? and fometimes where it is as fenfeless as the expofing a tender plant to all the inclemencies of a cruel feafon, and then going with sorrow to take it in, when the root is already dead. I faid, therefore, this was the foundation of almoft every kind of charity, and might

not one have added, of all policy too? fince the many ill confequences which attend the want of it, though grievously felt by the parties themselves, are no lefs fo by the community of which they are members; and moreover, of all mif chiefs feem the hardest to be redreffed.

Infomuch, that when one confiders the difloyal feductions of popery on one hand, and on the other, that no bad

man,

man, whatever he profeffes, can be a good fubject, one may venture to say, it had been cheaper and better for the nation to have bore the expence of instilling found principles and good morals, into the neglected children of the lower fort, especially in fome parts of Great-Britain, than to be obliged, fo often as we have been within this last century, to rife up and arm ourselves against the rebellious effects which the want of them have brought down even to our doors. And in fact, if we are to truft antiquity, the truth of which in this cafe we have no reafon to difpute, this matter has been looked upon of fuch vaft importance to the civil happiness and peace of a people, that fome commonwealths, the moft eminent for political wisdom, have chose to make a publick concern of it; think

VOL. I.

L

ing

ing it much fafer to be entrusted to the prudence of the magiftrate, than to the mistaken tendernefs or natural partiality of the parent.

It was confiftent with this, and bespoke a very refined fenfe of policy in the Lacedæmonians, (though by the way, I believe, different from what more modern politics would have directed in like circumstances) when Antipater demanded of them fifty children, as hoftages for the fecurity of a diftant engagement, they made this brave and wife answer, "They would not,

they

could not confent: they would ra"ther give him double the number of *their best up-grown men" - Intimating, that however they were diftreffed, they would chufe any inconvenience ra

ther

ther than fuffer the loss of their country's education; and the opportunity (which if once loft can never be regained) of giving their youth an early tincture of religion, and bringing them up to a love of industry and a love of the laws and conftitution of their country. - If this fhews the great importance of a proper education to children of all ranks and conditions, what fhall we fay then of thofe whom the providence of GOD has placed in the very loweft lot of life, utterly caft out of the without a parent without a friend to guide and instruct them; but what common pity and the neceffity of their fad fituation engages:

way of knowledge, fometimes may

be

where the dangers which furround them on every fide are fo great and many, that for one fortunate paffenger in life,

who makes his way well in the world with fuch early disadvantages and fo difmal a fetting out, we may reckon thoufands who every day fuffer fhipwreck, and are loft for ever.

If there is a cafe under Heaven which calls out aloud for the more immediate exercife of compaffion, and which may be looked upon as the compendium of all charity, furely it is this: and I'm perfuaded there would want nothing more to convince the greatest enemy to these kinds of charities that it is fo, but a bare opportunity of taking a nearer view of fome of the more distressful objects of it.

Let him go into the dwellings of the unfortunate, into fome mournful cottage,