better than ourselves. Parental authority, therefore, is one of the best means for getting sure hold of the mind; which, while that is in force, may be moulded into any shape, or tinctured with any kind of discipline and manners: but when that is dissolved, scarcely any tie will bind, or check controul it. Persuasions and promises, terrors and bribes, will be equally insufficient; instruction will not be listened to, nor examples regarded.

I have stated this to you, ingenuous youth! to shew you that, without submission, respect, and obedience to parents, the business of rearing, educating, and forwarding the young in life, cannot be accomplished; and that it is the child's own interest to comply with the wise intentions of Nature in this respect, and not to thwart them by any undutiful conduct to the authors, and, under God, the preservers, of his being,

But, whatever respect you owe to the authority of your parents in all matters of duty, the same deference is not required of you to their or any other authority that is merely human, in what relates to mere speculation, truth, or science. I acknowledge it is hard to separate them; but it may, and ought, for very good reasons, to be done, because parents are sometimes given to a wrong way of thinking themselves, have not always the advantages of a good education or a sound judgment, and some are even unprincipled and viciously inclined: under these circumstances

they

they are to be pitied, but not despised or ridiculed. But, as I have before observed, in Sect. 3, of Chap. V. of this work, a blind respect to the authority, or an implicit reliance on the judgment, of others, should never be given way to by a grown youth, who is arrived at that age when he is to be supposed capable of judging for himself, and discriminating between what is right and what is wrong; between what is true and what is false in' matters of opinion; for that ductile compliance with the views and assent to the notions of others is a most servile principle, which cramps our minds, confines our ideas, and makes us an easy prey to endless superstition. A mind endowed with the strongest faculties, may, by these means, have all its vigour maimed, and become only a more tenacious nursery of absurdity and error.---Therefore youth should never take any thing merely upon trust, not even from their parents: persuasion, and convincing argument, not authority only, will, in such cases, answer the purpose; for it is proper that youth should know, that regard is not due barely to superior rank in matters of mere opinion; that they should desire a reason for every thing, and never absolutely yield their assent unless they are convinced.

But this is not to supersede the personal respect you owe to your parents; for an independent way of thinking, and difference of opinion, are perfectly compatible with the reverence and attention due to

them; and it would be absurd to suppose that a vicious parent could benefit his child by his example or advice, or an illiterate clown instruct his well-educated son; nevertheless, the sons owe a proper personal respect in both cases; for, however they may detest the vice, and pity the ignorance, they are not absolved from their duty.

But, on this subject, there remains yet one most important point for me. to direct your warmest attention to, as well as that of every youth of both sexes, into whose hands this treatise may fall; and, if you are possessed of those refined sentiments, and amiable feelings, which do so much honour to our nature, particularly in the season of youth, I confidently hope, that what I have to offer to your notice will make a very. deep and lasting impression upon your ingenuous mind---it is the respect due to your MOTHER---to her who gave you birth.

Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? ISAIAH.

The Almighty, endeavouring to convince his people of his love, finds no other more powerful emblem of it in Nature, than that of a mother for her child, and, accordingly, puts this question to them; followed by the assurance, that, though it might possibly happen from her frailty that she should forget her child, yet he would not forget them but, at the same time, the rarity of its

occur

occurring is admitted by the very question itself; and, to the honour of maternal feelings, it may be. safely asserted, that they often carry their love, and kindness to an extent, which, if not restrained by a father's more prudent austerity, might be productive of bad consequences to their rising offspring, in the business of rearing, educating, apprenticing, and settling them in life.

You view with admiration the parental anxiety and solicitude of the hen for her chickens, and more particularly so for her adopted alien brood of ducklings, when they first take to the water. --You behold, with a pleasing emotion, the circumstance of her gathering them under her wings; when danger threatens them from the storm, the hawk, or the kite. You are delighted to. see her scratch about the yard, in quest of food for her little ones, and resisting the impulse of hunger herself to satisfy their wants. And will you, a rational creature, review in thought, with less admiration, the assiduous cares and longcontinued solicitude of your MOTHER, in the laborious task of rearing you to your present age, after having borne you in her womb the accustomed time, and brought you into the world with much pain and difficulty, and, perhaps, at the risque of her own life?

Would you pass over, without suitable, grateful reflections, the first days of your infancy, when as yet you could not be sensible of her kindness,

her

her endearing fondness, and the endless trouble she had with you?---View your then helpless situation, in the first infant you meet with; contemplate in it the constant and prolonged care, anxiety, and trouble, that she underwent to rear you, and be insensible to it if you can. Would you forget the kindness, maternal affection, parental solicitude, and indulgent treatment, which, from the first dawn of perception and reason, you have actually witnessed yourself, in her who gave you birth?---Go, child of Reason, to the irrationals---the birds and brute beasts, and take a lesson of gratitude from them. View the young stork religiously discharging its duties to its aged helpless parents, by carrying them on its back, and in this manner transporting them from one place to another, wherever food can be procured for them.

Young men have been generally branded with the charge of thinking themselves much wiser than their mothers, and, accordingly, treating them rather lightly, or paying very little deference to their opinions; but, should the advantages of sex, and a superior education, to the giving of which the mother has probably contributed as much as the father, induce a son to despise the affectionate and indulgent parent who gave him birth?---or, which is too often the case, should the refined boarding-school miss toss up her head, and despise her father, for