likely that a child should be satisfied in a condition which degrades and depresses him beneath his acquaintance; and that he should see with patience the children of all other families, whose birth, place, and rank in life were like his own, advanced before him.

The habits of a young person are a consideration of still greater importance than his expectations. To accustom children to habits of ease, amusements, and elegance, and a thousand distinctions, and then to send them abroad into a calling where they must all be given up, or meet every day with contradiction and rebuke, and to suppose that your children will reconcile themselves to the change, is to suppose the children much wiser than their parents-is to expect that from the indecision and vehemency of youth, which you will find is the fruit of reflection and resolution.

The rule we lay down then is this,—that a parent is bound, if in his power (for no one is bound to impossibilities), to provide his child with a calling suited to his talents and reasonable expectations, and to supply the exigencies of that calling; and those expectations and exigencies are to be deemed reasonable which the generality of others in similar circumstances, or of the same profession, are commonly indulged with: and then, when a parent has done this, he has done his duty-so far as relates to provision.

We will next see how this rule applies to the different classes and conditions of life, and who are the persons that offend against it.

First then, the most important, because the most numerous of men amongst us, are those who have only their labour to live by.

It is manifest that if they accustom their children betimes to industry, and procure them any calling in which their industry will honestly support them, they completely acquit themselves of the duty of a parent to his child; as completely, perhaps even more so, than the man who lays up an independence for his son, in order to raise a family or be in a condition above his birth. He provides his child with a situation suited to his habits; for he took care to habituate him from the beginning to labour and sobriety, and to the reasonable use of exertion: for the child who expects to live in idleness when his parents brought him up by their labour, cannot be said to entertain a reasonable expectation. And then, as to the demands of the situation, a livelihood for himself, and, in due time, the means of providing a livelihood for a family of his own, is the utmost that either reason or even custom can authorize him to expect. That in fact, with no extraordinary vein and inclination, he will expect. These things a parent cannot supply him with; but he can do better: for he can establish him in the business which he has taught him, or can get him taught, and direct him by the sober and industrious life he

has brought him up with, to maintain himself. This is a consolation and encouragement to their condition of life; as it shows that every man who has health and hands, and activity, need not fear being able to do his duty to his family: and would we did not observe many persons more afraid of the burden of a family than they are of offending God by a life of lewdness and licentiousness! They who transgress against this rule are the people who suffer their children to live in absolute idleness, or what is next to it, in some trifling employment which can never be of service to them when they become men

or in little pilferings and private tricks; and who do not, if they grow up, take care betimes to provide them with masters and honest laborious callings.

The next order of men are those who are in the middle, betwixt poverty and riches; who are of liberal professions, and though of smaller estates, in creditable branches of business. These might provide a mere subsistence for their children by sending them out into the world to get their bread by trade or manual labour; but they would not satisfy by these means the reasonable expectations of their children, which is necessary to be done, in order to give them a fair chance for happiness. Much less are they bound, on the other hand, to make them or leave them independent of any profession. This may happen sometimes; but I believe that there is more pleasure than merit in it, when it does happen. A calling in some degree upon a level, in point of place

and station, with that which their parents follow, is the utmost they are entitled to expect; and yet this simple and practicable rule is often and in various ways neglected. It is neglected from avarice, from vanity, and from extravagance. From avarice; as when a parent sinks his child's profession to save the charges of education, which of all schemes of economy is the worst for the child, when he becomes master of his liberty and his fortune, will hardly sit down with the calling he is brought up to, and is qualified for nothing better. But this error is not common. Our rule is violated from vanity, when a parent, from some foolish conceit of birth and distinction, thinks the ordinary occupations of life beneath the dignity of his family, and yet is not in circumstances to advance his children into the more honourable professions, and so leaves them to shift for themselves without either employment or profession at all; or, what is worse, introduces them perhaps into some profession or place of public education of some great name and repute, and yet has it not in his power to supply him with the necessary expenses of the station in which he has placed his child, until he can maintain himself: I call these necessary expenses, as I said before, which all or most in the same situation of life are allowed. This is both folly and cruelty:-folly, for you will hardly ever know an instance of a person succeeding in a profession who is thus shackled;-and cruelty to the child, for the thus lifting him up into the higher

classes of life, without giving him the means of supporting himself, is only to expose him to continual insult and mortification; to make his life and happiness a prey to every vexation and distress. I am sure that a parent who acts thus does not do his duty by his child, if it be a parent's duty to give his child a fair chance of happiness. He gives him indeed scarcely any chance at all: for there is not any one living who can be at ease under the difficulties and vexations which a man is liable to whose circumstances are inadequate to his state.

And lastly; parents do not discharge their duty to their children, or what is just the same, put it out of their power to discharge it, by their own extravagance. When a parent might, by frugality and self-denial and diligence, put his children into a calling suitable for them, and give or leave them sufficient to go on with his calling, and does not do so, he is then extravagant in the properest sense of that word, and his extravagance has a double effect on his children-it both accustoms them to high or luxurious living, and deprives them of the means of continuing it. Nor is it an excuse to say that their children shared with them; that they indulged them while in their power with every thing they could afford, or more. This is not that reasonable and permanent provision for a child's happiness which it is a parent's duty to make.

The last order of men which remains to be considered are those of great fortune and family, and