SECTION IX.

Of Placing Youth out Apprentices.

THERE are some grievances with respect to the ap. prenticing out of youth intended for business, which I have long wished to see redressed. As, in the first place, it does not appear to me necessary, that parents should hurry their sons away from places of education, before they can, by their age, be supposed to be sufficiently grounded in the various parts of useful and ornamental knowledge, or (which is of infinitely more consequence) principled in virtue and religion, to place them out apprentices seven years, to learn to sell a piece of linen, or a loaf of sugar, where there is an end of all opportunity of improvement, except in business. While a youth is at boarding school, he lives with one, who is to be supposed qualified to instruct him, and conduct his morals, and who is evidently interested to bestow his best diligence for those purposes. Whereas, a merchant, or tradesman, who does not depend upon apprentices, as a master of a place of education does upon pupils, and is besides immersed in a variety of business, cannot be supposed to have it in his power or inclination to give much attention to the conduct of his apprentices. On these considerations, I say, it seems unreasonable, and prejudicial to youth, to be removed, as they often are, from boarding school at fourteen or fifteen years, when they are just come to be capable of the more manly and useful parts of knowledge, as, geography, mathematics, philosophy, moral and natural, and the like; and to be thrust down into a merchant's or tradesman's kitchen among menial servants, or let loose among a set of thoughtless young fellows like themselves, but half principled, and therefore too liable to be led astray by every seducer. I cannot see the necessity of a youth's being placed out for seven years to learn the mystery of buying in, and selling out, half a dozen different kinds of goods; at the same time, that to learn all the intricacies of the business of an attorney, five years clerkship is reckoned sufficient.

Having mentioned the common manner of entertaining

apprentices, I beg leave to add, that though I see no advantage in treating young people with too much delicacy, yet it seems absurd to place the sons of merchants and substantial tradesmen with chamber maids and footmen. This I know is done, where three or four hundred pounds apprenticeship is given. If a gentleman thinks it a restraint upon his conversation, to have his apprentices at his own table, it would be no great matter, methinks, for the fathers of the youth to allow somewhat extraordinary for a separate room and proper accommodations, to prevent their keeping company with people beneath them, from whom they are likely to learn nothing but what is mean and sordid.

The modern way of life of our citizens, is indeed such, as, generally speaking, to expose the youth placed with them almost to the certainty of being debauched, if not utterly ruined. The master and mistress of the house engaged in the evenings in visiting, receiving visits, attending clubs, or public diversions, or in short, any way but minding their own families. And in the summer season, out of town on Saturdays and Sundays; some half the week; while their apprentices are left to themselves, exposed to the solicitations of the lewd women, who are allowed, to the shame of law and magistracy, to invest every street in London, and to turn the city into a great brothel. The sense of the fatal hazards the youth run during their apprenticeships in London, has determined many judicious parents of late years, to send their sons to pass them in foreign parts, where the way of life of the trading people is different from what prevails here.

SECTION X.

Of choosing Employments for Sons, and of providing Fortunes for them.

IN order to a person's having a chance for success and happiness in life, it is necessary that his parents consult the natural bent of his genius, before they determine what employment to put him to. The neglect of this most important particular has been the cause of infinite distress and disappointment, and has obliged many, after a course

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of misfortunes and vexations, in a way of life for which they have not been fitted by nature, to lay aside their first scheme and enter upon that for which nature has intended them. It is common for parents to resolve to give their children such employments as suit their own humour or convenience, rather than the capacity or natural bent of the young persons, who are the most concerned in the matter; to bring up a plain honest youth to law or physic, or thrust a heavy, plodding boy into a pulpit; to hamper a genius behind a counter, or bury him among bales of goods in a warehouse. But surely no parent of any consideration can hope to get the better of nature, to give his child qualifications which she has not given him, or to remove the insuperable difficulties she has laid in the way.

The tempers of youth however, may, in general, be said to divide themselves into two species. One is the inquisitive, penetrating, and studious; the other, the slow and laborious; both valuable in their respective ways. There are of these, several subdivisions, I mean those who have a particular turn to some single art or science. All which ought to be studied, with the utmost care by the parent, and humoured in the scheme of life intended for them. Had I a son, whose natural turn was to mechanics, I should certainly rather put him apprentice to a watchmaker, or a silversmith, in which I should think he could not fail to become eminent, and consequently to get a subsistence, if he applied diligently to his business, than bring him up to a learned profession, in which I could not expect him to make any figure. And so of other ticular turns.

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If the genius of a youth is bright, it will discover itself by its own native lustre; so that a parent will be at no loss to determine his son's particular cast. If his capacity is slow, it will perhaps be necessary to try him with a variety of employments and exercises; and as it is found that almost every rational creature has a turn for somewhat, and is by nature fitted for some place or other in society, a little time and attention will discover what a parent searches for.

Whatever the pride of parents may suggest, it is plain from observation, that great vivacity and brightness of parts in our sex, as well as extraordinary beauty or wit in

the other, do in fact often prove fatal to both; as they naturally tend to fill the heads of those who are possessed of them, with vanity and ambition, and to put them upon romantic projects, which take off their attention from the serious business of life. Not but that men of the finest parts are sometimes found as steady and prudent in the management of their affairs, as the dull and plodding; some of which, likewise, are found to grovel all their lives long in poverty and obscurity. But, generally speaking, it is otherwise. So that a parent, who has reason to look upon his son, as one who promises to make a figure by his parts, ought to be humble and cautious; for when such fly out, they go dreadful lengths in vice or folly; as, on the other hand, if a parent's prospects, with regard to his son's natural abilities, be less pleasing, he is not there fore to despair of making him fit for some useful and valuable station in life.

It is a very great mistake some parents run into, that the greatest kindness they can do their children is to give them, or leave them a great fortune. With this view some labour and toil all their lives, pinching themselves, and their families, and grudging their children an education suitable to their fortunes, only to heap up an enor mous capital, which is likely to be dissipated in much less time than it cost to amass it.

If a young gentleman is to inherit a large estate, without a suitable education, his great fortune will only make him the more extensively known and despised. And, if his prospects in life be meaner, he will have the more oc casion for an universal education to give him a chance for raising himself in the world. Experience shows that it is not, in fact, those who have set out in life with large capitals, that live happiest, and hold out longest in credit. One half of such traders, on the strength of their large fortunes and extensive credit, run into the fatal error of over trading, and the other into expensive living. Whereas, a young man, who has been prudently educated, and provided, by his parents, with a fortune sufficient for setting him on foot in business, knowing that he has no superfluous wealth to trust to, and consequently, that he must by frugality, industry and prudence, think to raise himself, will be likely to apply with steadiness and diligence to his

business; of which he will, in the end, reap the fruits. And if it should happen, in spite of his utmost care and prudence, that he should come to misfortunes, which I believe, no parent will pretend to insure his son against, a well accomplished man is not likely ever to be long destitute of a subsistence. Upon the whole, it is the greatest weakness a man of substance can fall into, to cramp his son's education for the sake of adding a few hundred pounds to his fortune. For it is not a few hundred pounds that will support him, when the bulk of his fortune is gone: but an useful education will enable him to get a subsistence, when the whole of his paternal fortune is gone.

SECTION XI.

Of settling Children, of both Sexes, in life.. WHEN a parent has in this manner equipped out his son with a proper education, and settled him in a way of living, if he has a fair opportunity, it will be his wisdom to see him, in his own lifetime, likewise settled in marriage. It is on all accounts the safest and best state. And a man is always less likely to break loose from virtue after he has entered into a settled way of life, than before.

What I have said of a son, may be urged with still more reason with respect to a daughter. It may often be much more prudent to give away a daughter in marriage on an indifferent offer, I mean as to circumstances of wealth, than to let slip an opportunity of seeing her placed out of harm's way. But no consideration will make up for the unhappiness she will be doomed to, if she falls into the hands of a morose, a furious, a drunken, a debauched, a spendthrift, or a jealous husband. If a man may be said to have shaken hands with happiness, who has thrown himself into the arms of a bad woman, much less reason has a weak, helpless woman to expect ever to see a happy day, after she comes into the power of a man void of virtue or humanity. Let those parents, therefore, who constrain their children, for the sake of sordid views, to plunge themselves into irretrievable misery, consider what they have to answer for, in doing an injury, which they