consciousness of their obligation, as well as other duties; and a sense of this obligation is sometimes necessary to assist the stimulus of parental affection; especially in stations of life, in which the wants of a family cannot be supplied without the continual hard labour of the father, nor without his refraining from many indulgences and recreations, which unmarried men of like condition are able to purchase. Where the parental affection is sufficiently strong, or has fewer difficulties to surmount, a principle of duty may still be wanted to direct and regulate its exertions; for otherwise, it is apt to spend and waste itself in a womanish fondness for the person of the child; an improvident attention to his present ease and gratification; a pernicious facility and compliance with his humours; an excessive and superfluous care to provide the externals of happiness, with little or no attention to the internal sources of virtue and satisfaction. Universally, wherever a parent's conduct is prompted or directed by a sense of duty, there is so much virtue.

Having premised thus much concerning the place which parental duties hold in the scale of human virtues, we proceed to state and explain the duties themselves.

When moralists tell us, that parents are bound to do all they can for their children, they tell us more than is true; for, at that rate, every expense which might have been spared, and every profit omitted which might have been made would be criminal.

The duty of parents has its limits, like other duties; and admits, if not of perfect precision, at least of rules definite enough for application.

These rules may be explained under the several heads of maintenance, education, and a reasonable provision for the child's happiness in respect of outward condition. I. Maintenance.

The wants of children make it necessary that some person maintain them; and, as no one has a right to burthen others by his act, it follows,

that the parents are bound to undertake this charge themselves. Beside this plain inference, the affection of parents to their children, if it be instinctive, and the provision which nature has prepared in the person of the mother for the sustentation of the infant, concerning the existence and design of which there can be no doubt, are manifest indications of the divine will.

From hence we learn the guilt of those, who run away from their families, or (what is much the same) in consequence of idleness or drunkenness, throw them upon a parish; or who leave them destitute at their death, when, by diligence and frugality, they might have laid up a provision for their support also of those, who refuse or neglect the care of their bastard offspring, abandoning them to a condition in which they must either perish or become burthensome to others; for the duty of maintenance, like the reason upon which it is founded, extends to bastards, as well as to legitimate children.

The Christian scriptures, although they concern themselves little with maxims of prudence or economy, and much less authorize worldly-mindedness or avarice, have yet declared in explicit terms their judgment of the obligation of this duty: "If any provide not for his own, especially for those of his own household, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel;" (1 Tim. v. 8.) he hath disgraced the Christian profession, and fallen short in a duty which even infidels acknowledge.

II. Education.

Education, in the most extensive sense of the word, may comprehend every preparation that is made in our youth for the sequel of our lives and in this sense I use it.

Some such preparation is necessary for children of all conditions, because, without it, they must be miserable, and probably will be vicious, when they grow up, either from want of the means of subsistence, or from want of rational and inoffensive occupation.

In civilized life, every thing is effected by art and skill. Whence a person who is provided with neither (and neither can be acquired without exercise and instruction) will be useless; and he that is useless, will generally be at the same time mischievous to the community. So that to send an uneducated child into the world is injurious to the rest of mankind; it is little better than to turn out a mad dog, or a wild beast into the streets.

In the inferior classes of the community, this principle condemns the neglect of parents, who do not inure their children betimes to labour and restraint, by providing them with apprenticeships, services, or other regular employment, but who suffer them to waste their youth in idleness and vagrancy, or to betake themselves to some lazy, trifling, and precarious calling for the consequence of having thus tasted the sweets of natural liberty, at an age when their passion and relish for it are at the highest, is, that they become incapable for the remainder of their lives of continued industry, or of persevering attention to any thing; spend their time in a miserable struggle between the importunity of want, and the irksomeness of regular application; and are prepared to embrace every expedient, which presents a hope of supplying their necessities without confining them to the plough, the loom, the shop, or the counting-house.

In the middle orders of society, those parents are most reprehensible, who neither qualify their children for a profession, nor enable them to live without one:* and those in the highest, who, from indolence, indulgence, or avarice, omit to procure their children those liberal attainments, which are necessary to make them useful in the stations to which they are destined. A man of fortune, who permits his son to consume the season of education, in hunting, shooting, or in frequenting horse-races, assemblies, or other uned

Amongst the Athenians, if the parent did not put his child into a way of getting a livelihood, the child was not bound to make provision for the parent when old and necessitous.

ifying, if not vicious diversions, defrauds the community of a benefactor, and bequeaths them a nuisance. Some, though not the same, preparation for the sequel of their lives, is necessary for youth of every description; and therefore for bastards, as well as for children of better expectations. Consequently, they who leave the education of their bastards to chance, contenting themselves with making provision for their subsistence, desert half their duty.

III. A reasonable provision for the happiness of a child in respect of outward condition, requires three things a situation suited to his habits and reasonable expectations; a competent provision for the exigences of that situation; and a probable security for his virtue.

The two first articles will vary with the condition of the parent. A situation somewhat approaching in rank and condition to the parent's own; or, where that is not practicable, similar to what other parents of like condition provide for their children, bounds the reasonable, as well as (generally speaking) the actual expectations of the child, and therefore contains the extent of the parent's obligation.

Hence, a peasant satisfies his duty, who sends out his children, properly instructed for their occupation, to husbandry, or to any branch of manufac ture. Clergymen, lawyers, physicians, officers in the army or navy, gentlemen possessing moderate fortunes of inheritance, or exercising trade in a. large or liberal way, are required by the same rule to provide their sons with learned professions, commissions in the army or navy, places in public offices, or reputable branches of merchandize. Providing a child with a situation, includes a competent supply for the expenses of that situation, until the prof.its of it enable the child to support himself. Noblemen, and gentlemen of high rank and fortune, may. be bound to transmit an inheritance to the representatives of their family, sufficient for their support without the aid of a trade or profession, to which

there is little hope that a youth, who has been flattered with other expectations, will apply himself with diligence or success. In these parts of the world, public opinion has assorted the members of the community into four or five general classes, each class comprising a great variety of employments and professions, the choice of which must be committed. to the private discretion of the parent.* All that can be expected from parents as a duty, and therefore the only rule which a moralist can deliver upon the subject is, that they endeavour to preserve their children in the class in which they are born, that is to say, in which others of similar expectations are accustomed to be placed; and that they be careful to confine their hopes and habits of indulgence to objects

which will continue to be attainable.

It is an ill judged thrift in some rich parents, to bring up their sons to mean employments, for the sake of saving the charge of a more expensive educa tion for these sons, when they become masters of their liberty and fortune, will hardly continue in occupations by which they think themselves degraded, and are seldom qualified for any thing better.

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*The health and virtue of a child's future life are considerations so superior to all others, that whatever is likely to have the smallest influence upon these, deserves the parent's first attention. In respect of health, agriculture, and all active, rural, and out-of-door employments, are to be preferred to manufactures, and sedentary occupations. In respect of virtue, a course of: dealings in which the advantage is mutual, in which the profit on one side is connected with the benefit of the other (which is the case in trade, and all serviceable art or labour) is more favourable to the moral character, than callings in which one man's gain is another man's loss; in which what you acquire, is acquired without equivalent, and parted with in distress; as in gaming, and whatever partakes of gaming, and in the predatory profits of war. The following distinctions also deserve notice. A business, like a retail trade, in which the profits are small and frequent, and accruing from the employment, furnishes a moderate and constant engagement to the mind, and so far suits better with the general disposition of mankind, than profes sions which are supported by fixed salaries, as stations in the church, army, navy, revenue, public offices, &c. or wherein the profits are made in large sums, by a few great concerns, or fortunate adventures: as in many branches of wholesale and foreign merchandize, in which the occupation is neither so constant, nor the activity so kept alive by immediate encouragement. For security, manual arts exceed merchandize, and such as supply the wants of mankind are better than those which minister to their pleasure. Situations which promise an early settlement in marriage, are on many accounts to be chosen before those which require a longer waiting for a larger establishmen