In our way home we both lamented the peculiar hardiness of this
country, which seems bent on its own destruction, nor will take
warning by any visitation, till the utmost wrath of Divine vengeance
overtakes it.
In discoursing upon this subject, we imputed much of the present
profligacy to the notorious want of care in parents in the education
of youth, who, as my friend informs me, with very little
school-learning, and not at all instructed (_ne minime quidem
imbuti_) in any principles of religion, virtue, and morality, are
brought to the great city, or sent to travel to other great cities
abroad, before they are twenty years of age, where they become their
own masters, and enervate both their bodies and minds with all sorts
of diseases and vices before they are adult.
I shall conclude with a passage in Aristotle's Politics,
lib. viii. cap. I. "[Greek text]" Which, for the sake of women, and
those few gentlemen who do not understand Greek, I have rendered
somewhat paraphrastically in the vernacular:--"No man can doubt but
that the education of youth ought to be the principal care of every
legislator; by the neglect of which, great mischief accrues to the
civil polity in every city.
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