in public, and is adding its portion to the mass of error, that upholds the dominion of misery and vice. Thus it will continue, till a very large proportion of those, who are everywhere intermingled with the current interests and business of life, and whose influence over its purposes and pleasures never ceases, shall be so educated as to make that influence promote the vigour and healthiness of the national character. It must ever be, that the habits of thought and action which regulate daily life will depend more, for their extension, on oral means and on example, than on books alone. What must happen if half the members of society, taken from every class, be artificially enfeebled? Will there be no danger that the predominating and customary errors of weakness, superstition, and subserviency to power and rank, will be inoculated into every vein of society? The writer of the Letters from Barbary says, that the good education of the women is the only safeguard he can imagine against the "self-indulgence, frivolity, and perpetual change of fashion, which follow in the train of high civilization. Women,' he continues," are more tractable, easier taught and moulded into habit, they possess from nature, or can sooner acquire, the most essential habit of controlling and regulating self-indulgence. They can more easily stop the source of the most destructive passions, and hence of the greatest evils of life; and when once raised to the influence and knowledge of which they are capable, they may teach us to do the same. "On the management of indulgence," continues he, "depend our best habits and dispositions, the enjoyment of everything, the duration of good taste, of life, of society itself*." "I This opinion may at first sight appear carried to extravagance; but the more carefully it is considered, the less we shall dissent from its general truth. The labour, the pursuits, or the practices which are forced upon us from necessity, take very little hold of our minds, except our free-will accompanies the necessity, which very often is far from being the case. would not change this mode of life if I could,” is not the most common feeling of our minds. But the pursuits we resort to, for relief from labour or restraint of some kind, meet us with feelings pliant and predisposed to their influence; they indicate our natural tastes and gather strength by indulgence. There is no occasion on which sympathy more heightens our sensibility, than when all meet together to relax from restraint and cast off our cares. It is then that the spirit of society spreads its infection, and if this be a bad one, a character destructive of our best interests may become general. Sensuality, levity, improvidence, selfishness, or some other character baneful to the prosperity of the country, may be acquired, and defects, not very heinous in an individual, may be disastrous when they become the characteristics of a nation. The simplest of all our indulgences, mere indolence, too soon loses its negative property; and if it pervade the body of the people, or the whole of the higher classes, it leads on from one consequence to another, till decay or revolution are the final result. * JACKSON'S Letters, 330 SECTION IV. Inefficacy of Generous Intentions without Knowledge. The observations in the preceding sections are far from being meant to depreciate the benevolence, which is almost a universal virtue in English women. In all ranks their charity to the poor is indisputable. It would be worse than error to speak slightingly of this virtue, without which one might fear that society, with its present elements of rancour, would scarcely cling together; a virtue the indispensable duty of Christians, and a feeling the sternest heathen would blush to disown. Even here, however, in the stronghold of their virtue, the feeble unreasoning state in which the meagre education of women has left their minds, is strikingly shown. A very few years since, evidence was brought forward, with every accompaniment that extensive investigation, laborious research, disinterested inquiry, honest intention, the highest authority, and the greatest publicity could supply, to prove, that the principal methods, by which national and individual benevolence had hitherto endeavoured to remedy poverty, had increased it, and created a great deal of vice besides. In such a case as this, the conduct of earnest and enlightened benevolence would have been in the first instance to ascertain, as accurately as possible, the claim of the evidence to credit. If it appeared so unexceptionable, that to doubt its general and substantial truth would really invalidate human testimony on every subject whatever, the next step would have been to examine carefully the validity of the remedies proposed, whether by writers, or other persons, who assume to teach the public. In doing this, inquirers would have arrived at some definite opinions, as to what charities were really proved, both by argument and evidence, to be injudicious, what were rashly and sweepingly condemned, and what others, though justly objected to on general principles, had yet created dependencies which they might consider too momentous to be destroyed by a sudden and violent change. In difficulties of this nature, had women been generally able to appreciate the value of right principles, their welldirected individual charity would have softened the rigour of rules, which, though judicious on the whole, fell as hardships on particular persons. This, by removing grounds of natural dissatisfaction, would have increased the efficacy of the severe though necessary remedy. Inquiry would have shown them that in general the persons who advocated and conducted those painful reforms, were more actuated by zeal in the cause of benevolence, than by the mere principle of doing effectively, a duty for which they received salaries. And that even if they carried some of their measures too far, they were so little wanting in mercy and charity, that they rather sought to redouble our acquaintance with the wants and the interests of the poor. Whether converts to particular remedies or not, persons of a judicious character, and earnest in the cause of humanity, would have been anxious to learn, that they might check the ill consequences of indiscriminate charity. What, on the contrary, was the conduct really pursued on that occasion, by many persons of both sexes? Was it not to vilify those who brought forward the evidence, though they did not take the trouble of reading it? Was it not to stigmatize the writers and promoters of the new system as hateful and wicked, though they never investigated their proceedings and arguments? Is it not true that designing and passionate men, since that time, have availed themselves of this morbid feeling, to add to the bitterness of a severe remedy, the cruel aggravation of representing it as a wrong designed to cause suffering? Have they not done this, knowing the law would not and ought not to be altered, and that their misrepresentations were grievously impeding its beneficial effects, and might lead to bloodshed? Is it not certain they could not have done this, if their wrongheaded or interested attempts had been met in every quarter of society, by persons of cultivated judgments, who had taken the trouble to acquaint themselves with the arguments on both sides. True benevolence should have led people to examine the principles of the new law, as they would have studied the nature of a new diet, that they might so direct their own private charity, as to moderate the evils incident at first to mere change, and so to give the experiment a fair trial. But goodness itself is sometimes connected with such shallow views of benevolence, that it is not unusual to find people, who take a sort of pride in refusing to |