Advice to Young Men William Cobbett 1024 downloads.pdf

The Project Gutenberg eBook of Advice to Young Men
This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States, you will
have to check the laws of the country where you are located before using
this eBook.

Title: Advice to Young Men

Author: William Cobbett

Release date: March 30, 2005 [eBook #15510]
Most recently updated: December 14, 2020

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/15510

Credits: E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, William Avery, and the
Project Gutenber Online Distributed Proofreading Team

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVICE TO
YOUNG MEN ***

E-text prepared by Jonathan Ingram, William Avery,
and the Project Gutenber Online Distributed Proofreading Team

COBBETT'S

ADVICE TO YOUNG MEN,

AND (INCIDENTALLY) TO

YOUNG WOMEN,
IN THE
Middle and Higher Ranks of Life.

IN A SERIES OF LETTERS, ADDRESSED TO

A YOUTH, A BACHELOR, A LOVER, A HUSBAND, A FATHER,
A CITIZEN, OR A SUBJECT.

BY WILLIAM COBBETT.

(FROM THE EDITION OF 1829)
LONDON
HENRY FROWDE
1906
OXFORD: HORACE HART
PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY

CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION
LETTER I - To a Youth
LETTER II - To a Young Man
LETTER III - To a Lover
LETTER IV - To a Husband
LETTER V - To a Father
LETTER VI - To the Citizen

INTRODUCTION
1. It is the duty, and ought to be the pleasure, of age and experience to warn
and instruct youth and to come to the aid of inexperience. When sailors
have discovered rocks or breakers, and have had the good luck to escape
with life from amidst them, they, unless they be pirates or barbarians as well
as sailors, point out the spots for the placing of buoys and of lights, in order
that others may not be exposed to the danger which they have so narrowly
escaped. What man of common humanity, having, by good luck, missed
being engulfed in a quagmire or quicksand, will withhold from his
neighbours a knowledge of the peril without which the dangerous spots are
not to be approached?
2. The great effect which correct opinions and sound principles, imbibed in
early life, together with the good conduct, at that age, which must naturally
result from such opinions and principles; the great effect which these have
on the whole course of our lives is, and must be, well known to every man
of common observation. How many of us, arrived at only forty years, have
to repent; nay, which of us has not to repent, or has not had to repent, that
he did not, at an earlier age, possess a great stock of knowledge of that kind
which has an immediate effect on our personal ease and happiness; that
kind of knowledge, upon which the cheerfulness and the harmony of our
homes depend!
3. It is to communicate a stock of this sort of knowledge, in particular, that
this work is intended; knowledge, indeed, relative to education, to many
sciences, to trade, agriculture, horticulture, law, government, and religion;
knowledge relating, incidentally, to all these; but, the main object is to
furnish that sort of knowledge to the young which but few men acquire until
they be old, when it comes too late to be useful.
4. To communicate to others the knowledge that I possess has always been
my taste and my delight; and few, who know anything of my progress
through life, will be disposed to question my fitness for the task. Talk of
rocks and breakers and quagmires and quicksands, who has ever escaped

from amidst so many as I have! Thrown (by my own will, indeed) on the
wide world at a very early age, not more than eleven or twelve years,
without money to support, without friends to advise, and without book-
learning to assist me; passing a few years dependent solely on my own
labour for my subsistence; then becoming a common soldier and leading a
military life, chiefly in foreign parts, for eight years; quitting that life after
really, for me, high promotion, and with, for me, a large sum of money;
marrying at an early age, going at once to France to acquire the French
language, thence to America; passing eight years there, becoming
bookseller and author, and taking a prominent part in all the important
discussions of the interesting period from 1793 to 1799, during which there
was, in that country, a continued struggle carried on between the English
and the French parties; conducting myself, in the ever-active part which I
took in that struggle, in such a way as to call forth marks of unequivocal
approbation from the government at home; returning to England in 1800,
resuming my labours here, suffering, during these twenty-nine years, two
years of imprisonment, heavy fines, three years self-banishment to the other
side of the Atlantic, and a total breaking of fortune, so as to be left without a
bed to lie on, and, during these twenty-nine years of troubles and of
punishments, writing and publishing, every week of my life, whether in
exile or not, eleven weeks only excepted, a periodical paper, containing
more or less of matter worthy of public attention; writing and publishing,
during the same twenty-nine years, a grammar of the French and another of
the English language, a work on the Economy of the Cottage, a work on
Forest Trees and Woodlands, a work on Gardening, an account of America,
a book of Sermons, a work on the Corn-plant, a History of the Protestant
Reformation; all books of great and continued sale, and the last
unquestionably the book of greatest circulation in the whole world, the
Bible only excepted; having, during these same twenty-nine years of
troubles and embarrassments without number, introduced into England the
manufacture of Straw-plat; also several valuable trees; having introduced,
during the same twenty-nine years, the cultivation of the Corn-plant, so
manifestly valuable as a source of food; having, during the same period,
always (whether in exile or not) sustained a shop of some size, in London;
having, during the whole of the same period, never employed less, on an
average, than ten persons, in some capacity or other, exclusive of printers,
bookbinders, and others, connected with papers and books; and having,

during these twenty-nine years of troubles, embarrassments, prisons, fines,
and banishments, bred up a family of seven children to man's and woman's
state.
5. If such a man be not, after he has survived and accomplished all this,
qualified to give Advice to Young Men, no man is qualified for that task.
There may have been natural genius: but genius alone, not all the genius in
the world, could, without something more, have conducted me through
these perils. During these twenty-nine years, I have had for deadly and ever-
watchful foes, a government that has the collecting and distributing of sixty
millions of pounds in a year, and also every soul who shares in that
distribution. Until very lately, I have had, for the far greater part of the time,
the whole of the press as my deadly enemy. Yet, at this moment, it will not
be pretended, that there is another man in the kingdom, who has so many
cordial friends. For as to the friends of ministers and the great, the
friendship is towards the power, the influence; it is, in fact, towards those
taxes, of which so many thousands are gaping to get at a share. And, if we
could, through so thick a veil, come at the naked fact, we should find the
subscription, now going on in Dublin for the purpose of erecting a
monument in that city, to commemorate the good recently done, or alleged
to be done, to Ireland, by the DUKE of WELLINGTON; we should find,
that the subscribers have the taxes in view; and that, if the monument shall
actually be raised, it ought to have selfishness, and not gratitude, engraven
on its base. Nearly the same may be said with regard to all the praises that
we hear bestowed on men in power. The friendship which is felt towards me
is pure and disinterested: it is not founded in any hope that the parties can
have, that they can ever profit from professing it: it is founded on the
gratitude which they entertain for the good that I have done them; and, of
this sort of friendship, and friendship so cordial, no man ever possessed a
larger portion.
6. Now, mere genius will not acquire this for a man. There must be
something more than genius: there must be industry: there must be
perseverance: there must be, before the eyes of the nation, proofs of
extraordinary exertion: people must say to themselves, 'What wise conduct
must there have been in the employing of the time of this man! How sober,
how sparing in diet, how early a riser, how little expensive he must have
been!' These are the things, and not genius, which have caused my labours

to be so incessant and so successful: and, though I do not affect to believe,
that every young man, who shall read this work, will become able to
perform labours of equal magnitude and importance, I do pretend, that
every young man, who will attend to my advice, will become able to
perform a great deal more than men generally do perform, whatever may be
his situation in life; and, that he will, too, perform it with greater ease and
satisfaction than he would, without the advice, be able to perform the
smaller portion.
7. I have had, from thousands of young men, and men advanced in years
also, letters of thanks for the great benefit which they have derived from my
labours. Some have thanked me for my Grammars, some for my Cottage
Economy, others for the Woodlands and the Gardener; and, in short, for
every one of my works have I received letters of thanks from numerous
persons, of whom I had never heard before. In many cases I have been told,
that, if the parties had had my books to read some years before, the gain to
them, whether in time or in other things, would have been very great. Many,
and a great many, have told me, that, though long at school, and though
their parents had paid for their being taught English Grammar, or French,
they had, in a short time, learned more from my books, on those subjects,
than they had learned, in years, from their teachers. How many gentlemen
have thanked me, in the strongest terms, for my Woodlands and Gardener,
observing (just as Lord Bacon had observed in his time) that they had
before seen no books, on these subjects, that they could understand! But, I
know not of anything that ever gave me more satisfaction than I derived
from the visit of a gentleman of fortune, whom I had never heard of before,
and who, about four years ago, came to thank me in person for a complete
reformation, which had been worked in his son by the reading of my two
SERMONS on drinking and on gaming.
8. I have, therefore, done, already, a great deal in this way: but, there is still
wanting, in a compact form, a body of ADVICE such as that which I now
propose to give: and in the giving of which I shall divide my matter as
follows. 1. Advice addressed to a YOUTH; 2. Advice addressed to a
BACHELOR; 3. Advice addressed to a LOVER; 4. To a HUSBAND; 5. To
a FATHER; 6. To a CITIZEN or SUBJECT.

9. Some persons will smile, and others laugh outright, at the idea of
'Cobbett's giving advice for conducting the affairs of love.' Yes, but I was
once young, and surely I may say with the poet, I forget which of them,

'Though old I am, for ladies' love unfit,
The power of beauty I remember yet.'

I forget, indeed, the names of the ladies as completely, pretty nigh, as I do
that of the poets; but I remember their influence, and of this influence on
the conduct and in the affairs and on the condition of men, I have, and must
have, been a witness all my life long. And, when we consider in how great a
degree the happiness of all the remainder of a man's life depends, and
always must depend, on his taste and judgment in the character of a lover,
this may well be considered as the most important period of the whole term
of his existence.
10. In my address to the HUSBAND, I shall, of course, introduce advice
relative to the important duties of masters and servants; duties of great
importance, whether considered as affecting families or as affecting the
community. In my address to the CITIZEN or SUBJECT, I shall consider
all the reciprocal duties of the governors and the governed, and also the
duties which man owes to his neighbour. It would be tedious to attempt to
lay down rules for conduct exclusively applicable to every distinct calling,
profession, and condition of life; but, under the above-described heads, will
be conveyed every species of advice of which I deem the utility to be
unquestionable.
11. I have thus fully described the nature of my little work, and, before I
enter on the first Letter, I venture to express a hope, that its good effects
will be felt long after its author shall have ceased to exist.

LETTER I

TO A YOUTH
12. You are now arrived at that age which the law thinks sufficient to make
an oath, taken by you, valid in a court of law. Let us suppose from fourteen
to nearly twenty; and, reserving, for a future occasion, my remarks on your
duty towards parents, let me here offer you my advice as to the means likely
to contribute largely towards making you a happy man, useful to all about
you, and an honour to those from whom you sprang.
13. Start, I beseech you, with a conviction firmly fixed on your mind, that
you have no right to live in this world; that, being of hale body and sound
mind, you have no right to any earthly existence, without doing work of
some sort or other, unless you have ample fortune whereon to live clear of
debt; and, that even in that case, you have no right to breed children, to be
kept by others, or to be exposed to the chance of being so kept. Start with
this conviction thoroughly implanted on your mind. To wish to live on the
labour of others is, besides the folly of it, to contemplate a fraud at the least,
and, under certain circumstances, to meditate oppression and robbery.
14. I suppose you in the middle rank of life. Happiness ought to be your
great object, and it is to be found only in independence. Turn your back on
Whitehall and on Somerset-House; leave the Customs and Excise to the
feeble and low-minded; look not for success to favour, to partiality, to
friendship, or to what is called interest: write it on your heart, that you will
depend solely on your own merit and your own exertions. Think not,
neither, of any of those situations where gaudy habiliments and sounding
titles poorly disguise from the eyes of good sense the mortifications and the
heart-ache of slaves. Answer me not by saying, that these situations 'must be
filled by somebody;' for, if I were to admit the truth of the proposition,
which I do not, it would remain for you to show that they are conducive to
happiness, the contrary of which has been proved to me by the observation
of a now pretty long life.
15. Indeed, reason tells us, that it must be thus: for that which a man owes
to favour or to partiality, that same favour or partiality is constantly liable to

take from him. He who lives upon anything except his own labour, is
incessantly surrounded by rivals: his grand resource is that servility in
which he is always liable to be surpassed. He is in daily danger of being
out-bidden; his very bread depends upon caprice; and he lives in a state of
uncertainty and never-ceasing fear. His is not, indeed, the dog's life, 'hunger
and idleness;' but it is worse; for it is 'idleness with slavery,' the latter being
the just price of the former. Slaves frequently are well fed and well clad; but
slaves dare not speak; they dare not be suspected to think differently from
their masters: hate his acts as much as they may; be he tyrant, be he
drunkard, be he fool, or be he all three at once, they must be silent, or, nine
times out of ten, affect approbation: though possessing a thousand times his
knowledge, they must feign a conviction of his superior understanding;
though knowing that it is they who, in fact, do all that he is paid for doing,
it is destruction to them to seem as if they thought any portion of the service
belonged to them! Far from me be the thought, that any youth who shall
read this page would not rather perish than submit to live in a state like this!
Such a state is fit only for the refuse of nature; the halt, the half-blind, the
unhappy creatures whom nature has marked out for degradation.
16. And how comes it, then, that we see hale and even clever youths
voluntarily bending their necks to this slavery; nay, pressing forward in
eager rivalship to assume the yoke that ought to be insupportable? The
cause, and the only cause, is, that the deleterious fashion of the day has
created so many artificial wants, and has raised the minds of young men so
much above their real rank and state of life, that they look scornfully on the
employment, the fare, and the dress, that would become them; and, in order
to avoid that state in which they might live free and happy, they become
showy slaves.
17. The great source of independence, the French express in a precept of
three words, 'Vivre de peu,' which I have always very much admired. 'To
live upon little' is the great security against slavery; and this precept extends
to dress and other things besides food and drink. When DOCTOR
JOHNSON wrote his Dictionary, he put in the word pensioner thus:
'PENSIONER—A slave of state.' After this he himself became a pensioner!
And thus, agreeably to his own definition, he lived and died 'a slave of
state!' What must this man of great genius, and of great industry too, have
felt at receiving this pension! Could he be so callous as not to feel a pang

upon seeing his own name placed before his own degrading definition? And
what could induce him to submit to this? His wants, his artificial wants, his
habit of indulging in the pleasures of the table; his disregard of the precept
'Vivre de peu.' This was the cause; and, be it observed, that indulgences of
this sort, while they tend to make men poor and expose them to commit
mean acts, tend also to enfeeble the body, and more especially to cloud and
to weaken the mind.
18. When this celebrated author wrote his Dictionary, he had not been
debased by luxurious enjoyments; the rich and powerful had not caressed
him into a slave; his writings then bore the stamp of truth and
independence: but, having been debased by luxury, he who had, while
content with plain fare, been the strenuous advocate of the rights of the
people, became a strenuous advocate for taxation without representation;
and, in a work under the title of 'Taxation no Tyranny,' defended, and
greatly assisted to produce, that unjust and bloody war which finally
severed from England that great country the United states of America, now
the most powerful and dangerous rival that this kingdom ever had. The
statue of Dr. JOHNSON was the first that was put into St. PAUL'S
CHURCH! A signal warning to us not to look upon monuments in honour
of the dead as a proof of their virtues; for here we see St. PAUL'S
CHURCH holding up to the veneration of posterity a man whose own
writings, together with the records of the pension list, prove him to have
been 'a slave of state.'
19. Endless are the instances of men of bright parts and high spirit having
been, by degrees, rendered powerless and despicable, by their imaginary
wants. Seldom has there been a man with a fairer prospect of accomplishing
great things and of acquiring lasting renown, than CHARLES FOX: he had
great talents of the most popular sort; the times were singularly favourable
to an exertion of them with success; a large part of the nation admired him
and were his partisans; he had, as to the great question between him and his
rival (PITT), reason and justice clearly on his side: but he had against him
his squandering and luxurious habits: these made him dependent on the rich
part of his partisans; made his wisdom subservient to opulent folly or
selfishness; deprived his country of all the benefit that it might have derived
from his talents; and, finally, sent him to the grave without a single sigh

from a people, a great part of whom would, in his earlier years, have wept
at his death as at a national calamity.
20. Extravagance in dress, in the haunting of play-houses, in horses, in
everything else, is to be avoided, and, in youths and young men,
extravagance in dress particularly. This sort of extravagance, this waste of
money on the decoration of the body, arises solely from vanity, and from
vanity of the most contemptible sort. It arises from the notion, that all the
people in the street, for instance, will be looking at you as soon as you walk
out; and that they will, in a greater or less degree, think the better of you on
account of your fine dress. Never was notion more false. All the sensible
people that happen to see you, will think nothing at all about you: those
who are filled with the same vain notion as you are, will perceive your
attempt to impose on them, and will despise you accordingly: rich people
will wholly disregard you, and you will be envied and hated by those who
have the same vanity that you have without the means of gratifying it. Dress
should be suited to your rank and station; a surgeon or physician should not
dress like a carpenter! but there is no reason why a tradesman, a merchant's
clerk, or clerk of any kind, or why a shopkeeper or manufacturer, or even a
merchant; no reason at all why any of these should dress in an expensive
manner. It is a great mistake to suppose, that they derive any advantage
from exterior decoration. Men are estimated by other men according to their
capacity and willingness to be in some way or other useful; and though,
with the foolish and vain part of women, fine clothes frequently do
something, yet the greater part of the sex are much too penetrating to draw
their conclusions solely from the outside show of a man: they look deeper,
and find other criterions whereby to judge. And, after all, if the fine clothes
obtain you a wife, will they bring you, in that wife, frugality, good sense,
and that sort of attachment that is likely to be lasting? Natural beauty of
person is quite another thing: this always has, it always will and must have,
some weight even with men, and great weight with women. But this does
not want to be set off by expensive clothes. Female eyes are, in such cases,
very sharp: they can discover beauty though half hidden by beard and even
by dirt and surrounded by rags: and, take this as a secret worth half a
fortune to you, that women, however personally vain they may be
themselves, despise personal vanity in men.

21. Let your dress be as cheap as may be without shabbiness; think more
about the colour of your shirt than about the gloss or texture of your coat;
be always as clean as your occupation will, without inconvenience, permit;
but never, no, not for one moment, believe, that any human being, with
sense in his skull, will love or respect you on account of your fine or costly
clothes. A great misfortune of the present day is, that every one is, in his
own estimate, raised above his real state of life: every one seems to think
himself entitled, if not to title and great estate, at least to live without work.
This mischievous, this most destructive, way of thinking has, indeed, been
produced, like almost all our other evils, by the Acts of our Septennial and
Unreformed Parliament. That body, by its Acts, has caused an enormous
Debt to be created, and, in consequence, a prodigious sum to be raised
annually in taxes. It has caused, by these means, a race of loan-mongers and
stock-jobbers to arise. These carry on a species of gaming, by which some
make fortunes in a day, and others, in a day, become beggars. The
unfortunate gamesters, like the purchasers of blanks in a lottery, are never
heard of; but the fortunate ones become companions for lords, and some of
them lords themselves. We have, within these few years, seen many of these
gamesters get fortunes of a quarter of a million in a few days, and then we
have heard them, though notoriously amongst the lowest and basest of
human creatures, called 'honourable gentlemen'! In such a state of things,
who is to expect patient industry, laborious study, frugality and care; who,
in such a state of things, is to expect these to be employed in pursuit of that
competence which it is the laudable wish of all men to secure? Not long ago
a man, who had served his time to a tradesman in London, became, instead
of pursuing his trade, a stock-jobber, or gambler; and, in about two years,
drove his coach-and-four, had his town house and country house, and
visited, and was visited by, peers of the highest rank! A fellow-apprentice of
this lucky gambler, though a tradesman in excellent business, seeing no
earthly reason why he should not have his coach-and-four also, turned his
stock in trade into a stake for the 'Change; but, alas! at the end of a few
months, instead of being in a coach-and-four, he was in the Gazette!
22. This is one instance out of hundreds of thousands; not, indeed, exactly
of the same description, but all arising from the same copious source. The
words speculate and speculation have been substituted for gamble and
gambling. The hatefulness of the pursuit is thus taken away; and, while

taxes to the amount of more than double the whole of the rental of the
kingdom; while these cause such crowds of idlers, every one of whom calls
himself a gentleman, and avoids the appearance of working for his bread;
while this is the case, who is to wonder, that a great part of the youth of the
country, knowing themselves to be as good, as learned, and as well-bred as
these gentlemen; who is to wonder, that they think, that they also ought to
be considered as gentlemen? Then, the late war (also the work of the
Septennial Parliament) has left us, amongst its many legacies, such swarms
of titled men and women; such swarms of 'Sirs' and their 'Ladies'; men and
women who, only the other day, were the fellow-apprentices, fellow-
tradesmen's or farmers' sons and daughters, or indeed, the fellow-servants,
of those who are now in these several states of life; the late Septennial
Parliament war has left us such swarms of these, that it is no wonder that
the heads of young people are turned, and that they are ashamed of that
state of life to act their part well in which ought to be their delight.
23. But, though the cause of the evil is in Acts of the Septennial Parliament;
though this universal desire in people to be thought to be above their
station; though this arises from such acts; and, though it is no wonder that
young men are thus turned from patient study and labour; though these
things be undoubted, they form no reason why I should not warn you
against becoming a victim to this national scourge. For, in spite of every art
made use of to avoid labour, the taxes will, after all, maintain only so many
idlers. We cannot all be 'knights' and 'gentlemen': there must be a large part
of us, after all, to make and mend clothes and houses, and carry on trade
and commerce, and, in spite of all that we can do, the far greater part of us
must actually work at something; for, unless we can get at some of the
taxes, we fall under the sentence of Holy Writ, 'He who will not work shall
not eat.' Yet, so strong is the propensity to be thought 'gentlemen'; so
general is this desire amongst the youth of this formerly laborious and
unassuming nation; a nation famed for its pursuit of wealth through the
channels of patience, punctuality, and integrity; a nation famed for its love
of solid acquisitions and qualities, and its hatred of everything showy and
false: so general is this really fraudulent desire amongst the youth of this
now 'speculating' nation, that thousands upon thousands of them are, at this
moment, in a state of half starvation, not so much because they are too lazy
to earn their bread, as because they are too proud! And what are the

consequences? Such a youth remains or becomes a burden to his parents, of
whom he ought to be the comfort, if not the support. Always aspiring to
something higher than he can reach, his life is a life of disappointment and
of shame. If marriage befal him, it is a real affliction, involving others as
well as himself. His lot is a thousand times worse than that of the common
labouring pauper. Nineteen times out of twenty a premature death awaits
him: and, alas! how numerous are the cases in which that death is most
miserable, not to say ignominious! Stupid pride is one of the symptoms of
madness. Of the two madmen mentioned in Don Quixote, one thought
himself NEPTUNE, and the other JUPITER. Shakspeare agrees with
CERVANTES; for, Mad Tom, in King Lear, being asked who he is,
answers, 'I am a tailor run mad with pride.' How many have we heard of,
who claimed relationship with noblemen and kings; while of not a few each
has thought himself the Son of God! To the public journals, and to the
observations of every one, nay, to the 'county-lunatic asylums' (things never
heard of in England till now), I appeal for the fact of the vast and hideous
increase of madness in this country; and, within these very few years, how
many scores of young men, who, if their minds had been unperverted by the
gambling principles of the day, had a probably long and happy life before
them; who had talent, personal endowments, love of parents, love of
friends, admiration of large circles; who had, in short, everything to make
life desirable, and who, from mortified pride, founded on false pretensions,
have put an end to their own existence!
24. As to DRUNKENNESS and GLUTTONY, generally so called, these are
vices so nasty and beastly that I deem any one capable of indulging in them
to be wholly unworthy of my advice; and, if any youth unhappily initiated
in these odious and debasing vices should happen to read what I am now
writing, I refer him to the command of God, conveyed to the Israelites by
Moses, in Deuteronomy, chap. xxi. The father and mother are to take the
bad son 'and bring him to the elders of the city; and they shall say to the
elders, This our son will not obey our voice: he is a glutton and a drunkard.
And all the men of the city shall stone him with stones, that he die.' I refer
downright beastly gluttons and drunkards to this; but indulgence short, far
short, of this gross and really nasty drunkenness and gluttony is to be
deprecated, and that, too, with the more earnestness because it is too often
looked upon as being no crime at all, and as having nothing blameable in it;

nay, there are many persons who pride themselves on their refined taste in
matters connected with eating and drinking: so far from being ashamed of
employing their thoughts on the subject, it is their boast that they do it. St.
Gregory, one of the Christian fathers, says: 'It is not the quantity or the
quality of the meat, or drink, but the love of it that is condemned;' that is to
say, the indulgence beyond the absolute demands of nature; the hankering
after it; the neglect of some duty or other for the sake of the enjoyments of
the table.
25. This love of what are called 'good eating and drinking,' if very
unamiable in grown-up persons, is perfectly hateful in a youth; and, if he
indulge in the propensity, he is already half ruined. To warn you against acts
of fraud, robbery, and violence, is not my province; that is the business of
those who make and administer the law. I am not talking to you against acts
which the jailor and the hangman punish; nor against those moral offences
which all men condemn; but against indulgences, which, by men in general,
are deemed not only harmless, but meritorious; but which the observation
of my whole life has taught me to regard as destructive to human happiness,
and against which all ought to be cautioned even in their boyish days. I
have been a great observer, and I can truly say, that I have never known a
man, 'fond of good eating and drinking,' as it is called; that I have never
known such a man (and hundreds I have known) who was worthy of
respect.
26. Such indulgences are, in the first place, very expensive. The materials
are costly, and the preparations still more so. What a monstrous thing, that,
in order to satisfy the appetite of a man, there must be a person or two at
work every day! More fuel, culinary implements, kitchen-room; what! all
these merely to tickle the palate of four or five people, and especially
people who can hardly pay their way! And, then, the loss of time: the time
spent in pleasing the palate: it is truly horrible to behold people who ought
to be at work, sitting, at the three meals, not less than three of the about
fourteen hours that they are out of their beds! A youth, habituated to this
sort of indulgence, cannot be valuable to any employer. Such a youth
cannot be deprived of his table-enjoyments on any account: his eating and
drinking form the momentous concern of his life: if business interfere with
that, the business must give way. A young man, some years ago, offered
himself to me, on a particular occasion, as an amanuensis, for which he

appeared to be perfectly qualified. The terms were settled, and I, who
wanted the job dispatched, requested him to sit down, and begin; but he,
looking out of the window, whence he could see the church clock, said,
somewhat hastily, 'I cannot stop now, sir, I must go to dinner.' 'Oh!' said I,
'you must go to dinner, must you! Let the dinner, which you must wait upon
to-day, have your constant services, then: for you and I shall never agree.'
He had told me that he was in great distress for want of employment; and
yet, when relief was there before his eyes, he could forego it for the sake of
getting at his eating and drinking three or four hours, perhaps, sooner than I
should have thought it right for him to leave off work. Such a person cannot
be sent from home, except at certain times; he must be near the kitchen at
three fixed hours of the day; if he be absent more than four or five hours, he
is ill-treated. In short, a youth thus pampered is worth nothing as a person to
be employed in business.
27. And, as to friends and acquaintances; they will say nothing to you; they
will offer you indulgences under their roofs; but the more ready you are to
accept of their offers, and, in fact, the better taste you discover, the less they
will like you, and the sooner they will find means of shaking you off; for,
besides the cost which you occasion them, people do not like to have critics
sitting in judgment on their bottles and dishes. Water-drinkers are
universally laughed at; but, it has always seemed to me, that they are
amongst the most welcome of guests, and that, too, though the host be by
no means of a niggardly turn. The truth is, they give no trouble; they
occasion no anxiety to please them; they are sure not to make their sittings
inconveniently long; and, which is the great thing of all, their example
teaches moderation to the rest of the company. Your notorious 'lovers of
good cheer' are, on the contrary, not to be invited without due reflection: to
entertain one of them is a serious business; and as people are not apt
voluntarily to undertake such pieces of business, the well-known 'lovers of
good eating and drinking' are left, very generally, to enjoy it by themselves
and at their own expense.
28. But, all other considerations aside, health, the most valuable of all
earthly possessions, and without which all the rest are worth nothing, bids
us, not only to refrain from excess in eating and drinking, but bids us to stop
short of what might be indulged in without any apparent impropriety. The
words of ECCLESIASTICUS ought to be read once a week by every young

person in the world, and particularly by the young people of this country at
this time. 'Eat modestly that which is set before thee, and devour not, lest
thou be hated. When thou sittest amongst many, reach not thine hand out
first of all. How little is sufficient for man well taught! A wholesome sleep
cometh of a temperate belly. Such a man riseth up in the morning, and is
well at ease with himself. Be not too hasty of meats; for excess of meats
bringeth sickness, and choleric disease cometh of gluttony. By surfeit have
many perished, and he that dieteth himself prolongeth his life. Show not thy
valiantness in wine; for wine hath destroyed many. Wine measurably taken,
and in season, bringeth gladness and cheerfulness of mind; but drinking
with excess maketh bitterness of mind, brawlings and scoldings.' How true
are these words! How well worthy of a constant place in our memories! Yet,
what pains have been taken to apologise for a life contrary to these
precepts! And, good God! what punishment can be too great, what mark of
infamy sufficiently signal, for those pernicious villains of talent, who have
employed that talent in the composition of Bacchanalian songs; that is to
say, pieces of fine and captivating writing in praise of one of the most
odious and destructive vices in the black catalogue of human depravity!
29. In the passage which I have just quoted from chap. xxxi. of
ECCLESIASTICUS, it is said, that 'wine, measurably taken, and in season,'
is a proper thing. This, and other such passages of the Old Testament, have
given a handle to drunkards, and to extravagant people, to insist, that God
intended that wine should be commonly drunk. No doubt of that. But, then,
he could intend this only in countries in which he had given wine, and to
which he had given no cheaper drink except water. If it be said, as it truly
may, that, by the means of the sea and the winds, he has given wine to all
countries, I answer that this gift is of no use to us now, because our
government steps in between the sea and the winds and us. Formerly,
indeed, the case was different; and, here I am about to give you,
incidentally, a piece of historical knowledge, which you will not have
acquired from HUME, GOLDSMITH, or any other of the romancers called
historians. Before that unfortunate event, the Protestant Reformation, as it
is called, took place, the price of RED WINE, in England, was fourpence a
gallon, Winchester measure; and of WHITE WINE, sixpence a gallon. At
the same time the pay of a labouring man per day, as fixed by law, was
fourpence. Now, when a labouring man could earn four quarts of good wine

in a day, it was, doubtless, allowable, even in England, for people in the
middle rank of life to drink wine rather commonly; and, therefore, in those
happy days of England, these passages of Scripture were applicable enough.
But, now, when we have got a Protestant government, which by the taxes
which it makes people pay to it, causes the eighth part of a gallon of wine
to cost more than the pay of a labouring man for a day; now, this passage of
Scripture is not applicable to us. There is no 'season' in which we can take
wine without ruining ourselves, however 'measurably' we may take it; and I
beg you to regard, as perverters of Scripture and as seducers of youth, all
those who cite passages like that above cited, in justification of, or as an
apology for, the practice of wine-drinking in England.
30. I beseech you to look again and again at, and to remember every word
of, the passage which I have just quoted from the book of
ECCLESIASTICUS. How completely have been, and are, its words
verified by my experience and in my person! How little of eating and
drinking is sufficient for me! How wholesome is my sleep! How early do I
rise; and how 'well at ease' am I 'with myself!' I should not have deserved
such blessings, if I had withheld from my neighbours a knowledge of the
means by which they were obtained; and, therefore, this knowledge I have
been in the constant habit of communicating. When one gives a dinner to a
company, it is an extraordinary affair, and is intended, by sensible men, for
purposes other than those of eating and drinking. But, in general, in the
every-day life, despicable are those who suffer any part of their happiness
to depend upon what they have to eat or to drink, provided they have a
sufficiency of wholesome food; despicable is the man, and worse than
despicable the youth, that would make any sacrifice, however small,
whether of money or of time, or of anything else, in order to secure a dinner
different from that which he would have had without such sacrifice. Who,
what man, ever performed a greater quantity of labour than I have
performed? What man ever did so much? Now, in a great measure, I owe
my capability to perform this labour to my disregard of dainties. Being shut
up two years in Newgate, with a fine on my head of a thousand pounds to
the king, for having expressed my indignation at the flogging of
Englishmen under a guard of German bayonets, I ate, during one whole
year, one mutton chop every day. Being once in town, with one son (then a
little boy) and a clerk, while my family was in the country, I had during

some weeks nothing but legs of mutton; first day, leg of mutton boiled or
roasted; second, cold; third, hashed; then, leg of mutton boiled; and so on.
When I have been by myself, or nearly so, I have always proceeded thus:
given directions for having every day the same thing, or alternately as
above, and every day exactly at the same hour, so as to prevent the
necessity of any talk about the matter. I am certain that, upon an average, I
have not, during my life, spent more than thirty-five minutes a day at table,
including all the meals of the day. I like, and I take care to have, good and
clean victuals; but, if wholesome and clean, that is enough. If I find it, by
chance, too coarse for my appetite, I put the food aside, or let somebody do
it, and leave the appetite to gather keenness. But the great security of all is,
to eat little, and to drink nothing that intoxicates. He that eats till he is full is
little better than a beast; and he that drinks till he is drunk is quite a beast.
31. Before I dismiss this affair of eating and drinking, let me beseech you to
resolve to free yourselves from the slavery of the tea and coffee and other
slop-kettle, if, unhappily, you have been bred up in such slavery. Experience
has taught me, that those slops are injurious to health: until I left them off
(having taken to them at the age of 26), even my habits of sobriety,
moderate eating, early rising; even these were not, until I left off the slops,
sufficient to give me that complete health which I have since had. I pretend
not to be a 'doctor;' but, I assert, that to pour regularly, every day, a pint or
two of warm liquid matter down the throat, whether under the name of tea,
coffee, soup, grog, or whatever else, is greatly injurious to health. However,
at present, what I have to represent to you is the great deduction, which the
use of these slops makes, from your power of being useful, and also from
your power to husband your income, whatever it may be, and from
whatever source arising. I am to suppose you to be desirous to become a
clever and a useful man; a man to be, if not admired and revered, at least to
be respected. In order to merit respect beyond that which is due to very
common men, you must do something more than very common men; and I
am now going to show you how your course must be impeded by the use of
the slops.
32. If the women exclaim, 'Nonsense! come and take a cup,' take it for that
once; but hear what I have to say. In answer to my representation regarding
the waste of time which is occasioned by the slops, it has been said, that let
what may be the nature of the food, there must be time for taking it. Not so

much time, however, to eat a bit of meat or cheese or butter with a bit of
bread. But, these may be eaten in a shop, a warehouse, a factory, far from
any fire, and even in a carriage on the road. The slops absolutely demand
fire and a congregation; so that, be your business what it may; be you
shopkeeper, farmer, drover, sportsman, traveller, to the slop-board you must
come; you must wait for its assembling, or start from home without your
breakfast; and, being used to the warm liquid, you feel out of order for the
want of it. If the slops were in fashion amongst ploughmen and carters, we
must all be starved; for the food could never be raised. The mechanics are
half-ruined by them. Many of them are become poor, enervated creatures;
and chiefly from this cause. But is the positive cost nothing? At boarding-
schools an additional price is given on account of the tea slops. Suppose
you to be a clerk, in hired lodgings, and going to your counting-house at
nine o'clock. You get your dinner, perhaps, near to the scene of your work;
but how are you to have the breakfast slops without a servant? Perhaps you
find a lodging just to suit you, but the house is occupied by people who
keep no servants, and you want a servant to light a fire and get the slop
ready. You could get this lodging for several shillings a week less than
another at the next door; but there they keep a servant, who will 'get you
your breakfast,' and preserve you, benevolent creature as she is, from the
cruel necessity of going to the cupboard and cutting off a slice of meat or
cheese and a bit of bread. She will, most likely, toast your bread for you too,
and melt your butter; and then muffle you up, in winter, and send you out
almost swaddled. Really such a thing can hardly be expected ever to
become a man. You are weak; you have delicate health; you are 'bilious!'
Why, my good fellow, it is these very slops that make you weak and bilious;
And, indeed, the poverty, the real poverty, that they and their concomitants
bring on you, greatly assists, in more ways than one, in producing your
'delicate health.'
33. So much for indulgences in eating, drinking, and dress. Next, as to
amusements. It is recorded of the famous ALFRED, that he devoted eight
hours of the twenty-four to labour, eight to rest, and eight to recreation. He
was, however, a king, and could be thinking during the eight hours of
recreation. It is certain, that there ought to be hours of recreation, and I do
not know that eight are too many; but, then observe, those hours ought to be
well-chosen, and the sort of recreation ought to be attended to. It ought to

be such as is at once innocent in itself and in its tendency, and not injurious
to health. The sports of the field are the best of all, because they are
conducive to health, because they are enjoyed by day-light, and because
they demand early rising. The nearer that other amusements approach to
these, the better they are. A town-life, which many persons are compelled,
by the nature of their calling, to lead, precludes the possibility of pursuing
amusements of this description to any very considerable extent; and young
men in towns are, generally speaking, compelled to choose between books
on the one hand, or gaming and the play-house on the other. Dancing is at
once rational and healthful: it gives animal spirits: it is the natural
amusement of young people, and such it has been from the days of Moses:
it is enjoyed in numerous companies: it makes the parties to be pleased with
themselves and with all about them; it has no tendency to excite base and
malignant feelings; and none but the most grovelling and hateful tyranny, or
the most stupid and despicable fanaticism, ever raised its voice against it.
The bad modern habits of England have created one inconvenience
attending the enjoyment of this healthy and innocent pastime, namely, late
hours, which are at once injurious to health and destructive of order and of
industry. In other countries people dance by day-light. Here they do not;
and, therefore, you must, in this respect, submit to the custom, though not
without robbing the dancing night of as many hours as you can.
34. As to GAMING, it is always criminal, either in itself, or in its tendency.
The basis of it is covetousness; a desire to take from others something, for
which you have given, and intend to give, no equivalent. No gambler was
ever yet a happy man, and very few gamblers have escaped being
miserable; and, observe, to game for nothing is still gaming, and naturally
leads to gaming for something. It is sacrificing time, and that, too, for the
worst of purposes. I have kept house for nearly forty years; I have reared a
family; I have entertained as many friends as most people; and I have never
had cards, dice, a chess-board, nor any implement of gaming, under my
roof. The hours that young men spend in this way are hours murdered;
precious hours, that ought to be spent either in reading or in writing, or in
rest, preparatory to the duties of the dawn. Though I do not agree with the
base and nauseous flatterers, who now declare the army to be the best
school for statesmen, it is certainly a school in which to learn
experimentally many useful lessons; and, in this school I learned, that men,

fond of gaming, are very rarely, if ever, trust-worthy. I have known many a
clever man rejected in the way of promotion only because he was addicted
to gaming. Men, in that state of life, cannot ruin themselves by gaming, for
they possess no fortune, nor money; but the taste for gaming is always
regarded as an indication of a radically bad disposition; and I can truly say,
that I never in my whole life knew a man, fond of gaming, who was not, in
some way or other, a person unworthy of confidence. This vice creeps on by
very slow degrees, till, at last, it becomes an ungovernable passion,
swallowing up every good and kind feeling of the heart. The gambler, as
pourtrayed by REGNARD, in a comedy the translation of which into
English resembles the original much about as nearly as Sir JAMES
GRAHAM'S plagiarisms resembled the Registers on which they had been
committed, is a fine instance of the contempt and scorn to which gaming at
last reduces its votaries; but, if any young man be engaged in this fatal
career, and be not yet wholly lost, let him behold HOGARTH'S gambler
just when he has made his last throw and when disappointment has bereft
him of his senses. If after this sight he remain obdurate, he is doomed to be
a disgrace to his name.
35. The Theatre may be a source not only of amusement but also of
instruction; but, as things now are in this country, what, that is not bad, is to
be learned in this school? In the first place not a word is allowed to be
uttered on the stage, which has not been previously approved of by the Lord
Chamberlain; that is to say, by a person appointed by the Ministry, who, at
his pleasure, allows, or disallows, of any piece, or any words in a piece,
submitted to his inspection. In short, those who go to play-houses pay their
money to hear uttered such words as the government approve of, and no
others. It is now just twenty-six years since I first well understood how this
matter was managed; and, from that moment to this, I have never been in an
English play-house. Besides this, the meanness, the abject servility, of the
players, and the slavish conduct of the audience, are sufficient to corrupt
and debase the heart of any young man who is a frequent beholder of them.
Homage is here paid to every one clothed with power, be he who or what he
may; real virtue and public-spirit are subjects of ridicule; and mock-
sentiment and mock-liberality and mock-loyalty are applauded to the skies.
36. 'Show me a man's companions' says the proverb, 'and I will tell you
what the man is;' and this is, and must be true; because all men seek the

society of those who think and act somewhat like themselves: sober men
will not associate with drunkards, frugal men will not like spendthrifts, and
the orderly and decent shun the noisy, the disorderly, and the debauched. It
is for the very vulgar to herd together as singers, ringers, and smokers; but,
there is a class rather higher still more blamable; I mean the tavern-
haunters, the gay companions, who herd together to do little but talk, and
who are so fond of talk that they go from home to get at it. The
conversation amongst such persons has nothing of instruction in it, and is
generally of a vicious tendency. Young people naturally and commendably
seek the society of those of their own age; but, be careful in choosing your
companions; and lay this down as a rule never to be departed from, that no
youth, nor man, ought to be called your friend, who is addicted to indecent
talk, or who is fond of the society of prostitutes. Either of these argues a
depraved taste, and even a depraved heart; an absence of all principle and of
all trust-worthiness; and, I have remarked it all my life long, that young
men, addicted to these vices, never succeed in the end, whatever advantages
they may have, whether in fortune or in talent. Fond mothers and fathers are
but too apt to be over-lenient to such offenders; and, as long as youth lasts
and fortune smiles, the punishment is deferred; but, it comes at last; it is
sure to come; and the gay and dissolute youth is a dejected and miserable
man. After the early part of a life spent in illicit indulgences, a man is
unworthy of being the husband of a virtuous woman; and, if he have
anything like justice in him, how is he to reprove, in his children, vices in
which he himself so long indulged? These vices of youth are varnished over
by the saying, that there must be time for 'sowing the wild oats,' and that
'wildest colts make the best horses.' These figurative oats are, however,
generally like the literal ones; they are never to be eradicated from the soil;
and as to the colts, wildness in them is an indication of high animal spirit,
having nothing at all to do with the mind, which is invariably debilitated
and debased by profligate indulgences. Yet this miserable piece of sophistry,
the offspring of parental weakness, is in constant use, to the incalculable
injury of the rising generation. What so amiable as a steady, trust-worthy
boy? He is of real use at an early age: he can be trusted far out of the sight
of parent or employer, while the 'pickle,' as the poor fond parents call the
profligate, is a great deal worse than useless, because there must be some
one to see that he does no harm. If you have to choose, choose companions
of your own rank in life as nearly as may be; but, at any rate, none to whom

you acknowledge inferiority; for, slavery is too soon learned; and, if the
mind be bowed down in the youth, it will seldom rise up in the man. In the
schools of those best of teachers the JESUITS, there is perfect equality as to
rank in life: the boy, who enters there, leaves all family pride behind him:
intrinsic merit alone is the standard of preference; and the masters are so
scrupulous upon this head, that they do not suffer one scholar, of whatever
rank, to have more money to spend than the poorest. These wise men know
well the mischiefs that must arise from inequality of pecuniary means
amongst their scholars: they know how injurious it would be to learning, if
deference were, by the learned, paid to the dunce; and they, therefore, take
the most effectual means to prevent it. Hence, amongst other causes, it is,
that their scholars have, ever since the existence of their Order, been the
most celebrated for learning of any men in the world.
37. In your manners be neither boorish nor blunt, but even these are
preferable to simpering and crawling. I wish every English youth could see
those of the United States of America; always civil, never servile. Be
obedient, where obedience is due; for, it is no act of meanness, and no
indication of want of spirit, to yield implicit and ready obedience to those
who have a right to demand it at your hands. In this respect England has
been, and I hope always will be, an example to the whole world. To this
habit of willing and prompt obedience in apprentices, in servants, in all
inferiors in station, she owes, in a great measure, her multitudes of
matchless merchants, tradesmen, and workmen of every description, and
also the achievements of her armies and navies. It is no disgrace, but the
contrary, to obey, cheerfully, lawful and just commands. None are so saucy
and disobedient as slaves; and, when you come to read history, you will find
that in proportion as nations have been free has been their reverence for the
laws. But, there is a wide difference between lawful and cheerful obedience
and that servility which represents people as laying petitions 'at the king's
feet,' which makes us imagine that we behold the supplicants actually
crawling upon their bellies. There is something so abject in this expression;
there is such horrible self-abasement in it, that I do hope that every youth,
who shall read this, will hold in detestation the reptiles who make use of it.
In all other countries, the lowest individual can put a petition into the hands
of the chief magistrate, be he king or emperor: let us hope, that the time will

yet come when Englishmen will be able to do the same. In the meanwhile I
beg you to despise these worse than pagan parasites.
38. Hitherto I have addressed you chiefly relative to the things to be
avoided: let me now turn to the things which you ought to do. And, first of
all, the husbanding of your time. The respect that you will receive, the real
and sincere respect, will depend entirely on what you are able to do. If you
be rich, you may purchase what is called respect; but it is not worth having.
To obtain respect worth possessing, you must, as I observed before, do
more than the common run of men in your state of life; and, to be enabled
to do this, you must manage well your time: and, to manage it well, you
must have as much of the day-light and as little of the candle-light as is
consistent with the due discharge of your duties. When people get into the
habit of sitting up merely for the purpose of talking, it is no easy matter to
break themselves of it: and if they do not go to bed early, they cannot rise
early. Young people require more sleep than those that are grown up: there
must be the number of hours, and that number cannot well be, on an
average, less than eight: and, if it be more in winter time, it is all the better;
for, an hour in bed is better than an hour spent over fire and candle in an
idle gossip. People never should sit talking till they do not know what to
talk about. It is said by the country-people, that one hour's sleep before
midnight is worth more than two are worth after midnight, and this I believe
to be a fact; but it is useless to go to bed early and even to rise early, if the
time be not well employed after rising. In general, half the morning is
loitered away, the party being in a sort of half-dressed half-naked state; out
of bed, indeed, but still in a sort of bedding. Those who first invented
morning-gowns and slippers could have very little else to do. These things
are very suitable to those who have had fortunes gained for them by others;
very suitable to those who have nothing to do, and who merely live for the
purpose of assisting to consume the produce of the earth; but he who has his
bread to earn, or who means to be worthy of respect on account of his
labours, has no business with morning gown and slippers. In short, be your
business or calling what it may, dress at once for the day; and learn to do it
as quickly as possible. A looking-glass is a piece of furniture a great deal
worse than useless. Looking at the face will not alter its shape or its colour;
and, perhaps, of all wasted time; none is so foolishly wasted as that which is
employed in surveying one's own face. Nothing can be of little importance,

if one be compelled to attend to it every day of our lives; if we shaved but
once a year, or once a month, the execution of the thing would be hardly
worth naming: but this is a piece of work that must be done once every day;
and, as it may cost only about five minutes of time, and may be, and
frequently is, made to cost thirty, or even fifty minutes; and, as only fifteen
minutes make about a fifty-eighth part of the hours of our average day-
light; this being the case, this is a matter of real importance. I once heard
SIR JOHN SINCLAIR ask Mr. COCHRANE JOHNSTONE, whether he
meaned to have a son of his (then a little boy) taught Latin. 'No,' said Mr.
JOHNSTONE, 'but I mean to do something a great deal better for him.'
'What is that?' said Sir John. 'Why,' said the other, 'teach him to shave with
cold water and without a glass.' Which, I dare say, he did; and for which
benefit I am sure that son has had good reason to be grateful. Only think of
the inconvenience attending the common practice! There must be hot water;
to have this there must be a fire, and, in some cases, a fire for that purpose
alone; to have these, there must be a servant, or you must light a fire
yourself. For the want of these, the job is put off until a later hour: this
causes a stripping and another dressing bout; or, you go in a slovenly state
all that day, and the next day the thing must be done, or cleanliness must be
abandoned altogether. If you be on a journey you must wait the pleasure of
the servants at the inn before you can dress and set out in the morning; the
pleasant time for travelling is gone before you can move from the spot;
instead of being at the end of your day's journey in good time, you are
benighted, and have to endure all the great inconveniences attendant on
tardy movements. And, all this, from the apparently insignificant affair of
shaving! How many a piece of important business has failed from a short
delay! And how many thousand of such delays daily proceed from this
unworthy cause! 'Toujours prêt' was the motto of a famous French general;
and pray let it be yours: be 'always ready;' and never, during your whole
life, have to say, 'I cannot go till I be shaved and dressed.' Do the whole at
once for the day, whatever may be your state of life; and then you have a
day unbroken by those indispensable performances. Begin thus, in the days
of your youth, and, having felt the superiority which this practice will give
you over those in all other respects your equals, the practice will stick by
you to the end of your life. Till you be shaved and dressed for the day, you
cannot set steadily about any business; you know that you must presently
quit your labour to return to the dressing affair; you, therefore, put it off

until that be over; the interval, the precious interval, is spent in lounging
about; and, by the time that you are ready for business, the best part of the
day is gone.
39. Trifling as this matter appears upon naming it, it is, in fact, one of the
great concerns of life; and, for my part, I can truly say, that I owe more of
my great labours to my strict adherence to the precepts that I have here
given you, than to all the natural abilities with which I have been endowed;
for these, whatever may have been their amount, would have been of
comparatively little use, even aided by great sobriety and abstinence, if I
had not, in early life, contracted the blessed habit of husbanding well my
time. To this, more than to any other thing, I owed my very extraordinary
promotion in the army. I was always ready: if I had to mount guard at ten, I
was ready at nine: never did any man, or any thing, wait one moment for
me. Being, at an age under twenty years, raised from Corporal to Serjeant
Major at once, over the heads of thirty Serjeants, I naturally should have
been an object of envy and hatred; but this habit of early rising and of rigid
adherence to the precepts which I have given you, really subdued these
passions; because every one felt, that what I did he had never done, and
never could do. Before my promotion, a clerk was wanted to make out the
morning report of the regiment. I rendered the clerk unnecessary; and, long
before any other man was dressed for the parade, my work for the morning
was all done, and I myself was on the parade, walking, in fine weather, for
an hour perhaps. My custom was this: to get up, in summer, at day-light,
and in winter at four o'clock; shave, dress, even to the putting of my sword-
belt over my shoulder, and having my sword lying on the table before me,
ready to hang by my side. Then I ate a bit of cheese, or pork, and bread.
Then I prepared my report, which was filled up as fast as the companies
brought me in the materials. After this I had an hour or two to read, before
the time came for any duty out of doors, unless when the regiment or part of
it went out to exercise in the morning. When this was the case, and the
matter was left to me, I always had it on the ground in such time as that the
bayonets glistened in the rising sun, a sight which gave me delight, of
which I often think, but which I should in vain endeavour to describe. If the
officers were to go out, eight or ten o'clock was the hour, sweating the men
in the heat of the day, breaking in upon the time for cooking their dinner,
putting all things out of order and all men out of humour. When I was

commander, the men had a long day of leisure before them: they could
ramble into the town or into the woods; go to get raspberries, to catch birds,
to catch fish, or to pursue any other recreation, and such of them as chose,
and were qualified, to work at their trades. So that here, arising solely from
the early habits of one very young man, were pleasant and happy days
given to hundreds.
40. Money is said to be power, which is, in some cases, true; and the same
may be said of knowledge; but superior sobriety, industry and activity, are a
still more certain source of power; for without these, knowledge is of little
use; and, as to the power which money gives, it is that of brute force, it is
the power of the bludgeon and the bayonet, and of the bribed press, tongue
and pen. Superior sobriety, industry, activity, though accompanied with but
a moderate portion of knowledge, command respect, because they have
great and visible influence. The drunken, the lazy, and the inert, stand
abashed before the sober and the active. Besides, all those whose interests
are at stake prefer, of necessity, those whose exertions produce the greatest
and most immediate and visible effect. Self-interest is no respecter of
persons: it asks, not who knows best what ought to be done, but who is
most likely to do it: we may, and often do, admire the talents of lazy, and
even dissipated men, but we do not trust them with the care of our interests.
If, therefore, you would have respect and influence in the circle in which
you move, be more sober, more industrious, more active than the general
run of those amongst whom you live.
41. As to EDUCATION, this word is now applied exclusively to things
which are taught in schools; but education means rearing up, and the
French speak of the education of pigs and sheep. In a very famous French
book on rural affairs, there is a Chapter entitled 'Education du Cochon,' that
is, education of the hog. The word has the same meaning in both languages;
for both take it from the Latin. Neither is the word LEARNING properly
confined to things taught in schools, or by books; for, learning means
knowledge; and, but a comparatively small part of useful knowledge comes
from books. Men are not to be called ignorant merely because they cannot
make upon paper certain marks with a pen, or because they do not know the
meaning of such marks when made by others. A ploughman may be very
learned in his line, though he does not know what the letters p. l. o. u. g. h
mean when he sees them combined upon paper. The first thing to be

required of a man is, that he understand well his own calling, or profession;
and, be you in what state of life you may, to acquire this knowledge ought
to be your first and greatest care. A man who has had a new-built house
tumble down will derive little more consolation from being told that the
architect is a great astronomer, than this distressed nation now derives from
being assured that its distresses arise from the measures of a long list of the
greatest orators and greatest heroes that the world ever beheld.
42. Nevertheless, book-learning is by no means to be despised; and it is a
thing which may be laudably sought after by persons in all states of life. In
those pursuits which are called professions, it is necessary, and also in
certain trades; and, in persons in the middle ranks of life, a total absence of
such learning is somewhat disgraceful. There is, however, one danger to be
carefully guarded against; namely, the opinion that your genius, or your
literary acquirements, are such as to warrant you in disregarding the calling
in which you are, and by which you gain your bread. Parents must have an
uncommon portion of solid sense to counterbalance their natural affection
sufficiently to make them competent judges in such a case. Friends are
partial; and those who are not, you deem enemies. Stick, therefore, to the
shop; rely upon your mercantile or mechanical or professional calling; try
your strength in literature, if you like; but, rely on the shop. If
BLOOMFIELD, who wrote a poem called the FARMER'S BOY, had placed
no reliance on the faithless muses, his unfortunate and much-to-be-pitied
family would, in all probability, have not been in a state to solicit relief
from charity. I remember that this loyal shoemaker was flattered to the
skies, and (ominous sign, if he had understood it) feasted at the tables of
some of the great. Have, I beseech you, no hope of this sort; and, if you find
it creeping towards your heart, drive it instantly away as the mortal foe of
your independence and your peace.
43. With this precaution, however, book-learning is not only proper, but
highly commendable; and portions of it are absolutely necessary in every
case of trade or profession. One of these portions is distinct reading, plain
and neat writing, and arithmetic. The two former are mere child's work; the
latter not quite so easily acquired, but equally indispensable, and of it you
ought to have a thorough knowledge before you attempt to study even the
grammar of your own language. Arithmetic is soon learned; it is not a thing
that requires much natural talent; it is not a thing that loads the memory or

puzzles the mind; and it is a thing of every-day utility. Therefore, this is, to
a certain extent, an absolute necessary; an indispensable acquisition. Every
man is not to be a surveyor or an actuary; and, therefore, you may stop far
short of the knowledge, of this sort, which is demanded by these
professions; but, as far as common accounts and calculations go, you ought
to be perfect; and this you may make yourself, without any assistance from
a master, by bestowing upon this science, during six months, only one half
of the time that is, by persons of your age, usually wasted over the tea-
slops, or other kettle-slops, alone! If you become fond of this science, there
may be a little danger of wasting your time on it. When, therefore, you have
got as much of it as your business or profession can possibly render
necessary, turn the time to some other purpose. As to books, on this subject,
they are in everybody's hand; but, there is one book on the subject of
calculations, which I must point out to you; 'THE CAMBIST,' by Dr.
KELLY. This is a bad title, because, to men in general, it gives no idea of
what the book treats of. It is a book which shows the value of the several
pieces of money of one country when stated in the money of another
country. For instance, it tells us what a Spanish Dollar, a Dutch Dollar, a
French Frank, and so on, is worth in English money. It does the same with
regard to weights and measures: and it extends its information to all the
countries in the world. It is a work of rare merit; and every youth, be his
state of life what it may, if it permit him to pursue book-learning of any
sort, and particularly if he be destined, or at all likely to meddle with
commercial matters, ought, as soon as convenient, to possess this valuable
and instructive book.
44. The next thing is the GRAMMAR of your own language. Without
understanding this, you can never hope to become fit for anything beyond
mere trade or agriculture. It is true, that we do (God knows!) but too often
see men have great wealth, high titles, and boundless power heaped upon
them, who can hardly write ten lines together correctly; but, remember, it is
not merit that has been the cause of their advancement; the cause has been,
in almost every such case, the subserviency of the party to the will of some
government, and the baseness of some nation who have quietly submitted to
be governed by brazen fools. Do not you imagine, that you will have luck
of this sort: do not you hope to be rewarded and honoured for that
ignorance which shall prove a scourge to your country, and which will earn

you the curses of the children yet unborn. Rely you upon your merit, and
upon nothing else. Without a knowledge of grammar, it is impossible for
you to write correctly, and it is by mere accident if you speak correctly; and,
pray bear in mind, that all well-informed persons judge of a man's mind
(until they have other means of judging) by his writing or speaking. The
labour necessary to acquire this knowledge is, indeed, not trifling: grammar
is not, like arithmetic, a science consisting of several distinct departments,
some of which may be dispensed with: it is a whole, and the whole must be
learned, or no part is learned. The subject is abstruse: it demands much
reflection and much patience: but, when once the task is performed, it is
performed for life, and in every day of that life it will be found to be, in a
greater or less degree, a source of pleasure or of profit or of both together.
And, what is the labour? It consists of no bodily exertion; it exposes the
student to no cold, no hunger, no suffering of any sort. The study need
subtract from the hours of no business, nor, indeed, from the hours of
necessary exercise: the hours usually spent on the tea and coffee slops and
in the mere gossip which accompany them; those wasted hours of only one
year, employed in the study of English grammar, would make you a correct
speaker and writer for the rest of your life. You want no school, no room to
study in, no expenses, and no troublesome circumstances of any sort. I
learned grammar when I was a private soldier on the pay of sixpence a day.
The edge of my berth, or that of the guard-bed, was my seat to study in; my
knapsack was my book-case; a bit of board, lying on my lap, was my
writing-table; and the task did not demand any thing like a year of my life. I
had no money to purchase candle or oil; in winter-time it was rarely that I
could get any evening-light but that of the fire, and only my turn even of
that. And if I, under such circumstances, and without parent or friend to
advise or encourage me, accomplished this undertaking, what excuse can
there be for any youth, however poor, however pressed with business, or
however circumstanced as to room or other conveniences? To buy a pen or
a sheet of paper I was compelled to forego some portion of food, though in
a state of half-starvation; I had no moment of time that I could call my own;
and I had to read and to write amidst the talking, laughing, singing,
whistling and brawling of at least half a score of the most thoughtless of
men, and that too in the hours of their freedom from all control. Think not
lightly of the farthing that I had to give, now and then, for ink, pen, or
paper! That farthing was, alas! a great sum to me! I was as tall as I am now;

I had great health and great exercise. The whole of the money, not expended
for us at market, was two-pence a week for each man. I remember, and well
I may! that upon one occasion I, after all absolutely necessary expenses,
had, on a Friday, made shift to have a halfpenny in reserve, which I had
destined for the purchase of a red-herring in the morning; but, when I
pulled off my clothes at night, so hungry then as to be hardly able to endure
life, I found that I had lost my halfpenny! I buried my head under the
miserable sheet and rug, and cried like a child! And, again I say, if I, under
circumstances like these, could encounter and overcome this task, is there,
can there be, in the whole world, a youth to find an excuse for the non-
performance? What youth, who shall read this, will not be ashamed to say,
that he is not able to find time and opportunity for this most essential of all
the branches of book-learning?
45. I press this matter with such earnestness, because a knowledge of
grammar is the foundation of all literature; and because without this
knowledge opportunities for writing and speaking are only occasions for
men to display their unfitness to write and speak. How many false
pretenders to erudition, have I exposed to shame merely by my knowledge
of grammar! How many of the insolent and ignorant great and powerful
have I pulled down and made little and despicable! And, with what ease
have I conveyed upon numerous important subjects, information and
instruction to millions now alive, and provided a store of both for millions
yet unborn! As to the course to be pursued in this great undertaking, it is,
first, to read the grammar from the first word to the last, very attentively,
several times over; then, to copy the whole of it very correctly and neatly;
and then to study the Chapters one by one. And what do this reading and
writing require as to time? Both together not more than the tea-slops and
their gossips for three months! There are about three hundred pages in my
English Grammar. Four of those little pages in a day, which is a mere trifle
of work, do the thing in three months. Two hours a day are quite sufficient
for the purpose; and these may, in any town that I have ever known, or in
any village, be taken from that part of the morning during which the main
part of the people are in bed. I do not like the evening-candle-light work: it
wears the eyes much more than the same sort of light in the morning,
because then the faculties are in vigour and wholly unexhausted. But for
this purpose there is sufficient of that day-light which is usually wasted;

usually gossipped or lounged away; or spent in some other manner
productive of no pleasure, and generally producing pain in the end. It is
very becoming in all persons, and particularly in the young, to be civil, and
even polite: but it becomes neither young nor old to have an everlasting
simper on their faces, and their bodies sawing in an everlasting bow: and,
how many youths have I seen who, if they had spent, in the learning of
grammar, a tenth part of the time that they have consumed in earning
merited contempt for their affected gentility, would have laid the foundation
of sincere respect towards them for the whole of their lives!
46. Perseverance is a prime quality in every pursuit, and particularly in this.
Yours is, too, the time of life to acquire this inestimable habit. Men fail
much oftener from want of perseverance than from want of talent and of
good disposition: as the race was not to the hare but to the tortoise, so the
meed of success in study is to him who is not in haste, but to him who
proceeds with a steady and even step. It is not to a want of taste or of desire
or of disposition to learn that we have to ascribe the rareness of good
scholars, so much as to the want of patient perseverance. Grammar is a
branch of knowledge; like all other things of high value, it is of difficult
acquirement: the study is dry; the subject is intricate; it engages not the
passions; and, if the great end be not kept constantly in view; if you lose,
for a moment, sight of the ample reward, indifference begins, that is
followed by weariness, and disgust and despair close the book. To guard
against this result be not in haste; keep steadily on; and, when you find
weariness approaching, rouse yourself, and remember, that if you give up,
all that you have done has been done in vain. This is a matter of great
moment; for out of every ten, who undertake this task, there are, perhaps,
nine who abandon it in despair; and this, too, merely for the want of
resolution to overcome the first approaches of weariness. The most
effectual means of security against this mortifying result is to lay down a
rule to write or to read a certain fixed quantity every day, Sunday excepted.
Our minds are not always in the same state; they have not, at all times, the
same elasticity; to-day we are full of hope on the very same grounds which,
to-morrow, afford us no hope at all: every human being is liable to those
flows and ebbs of the mind; but, if reason interfere, and bid you overcome
the fits of lassitude, and almost mechanically to go on without the stimulus
of hope, the buoyant fit speedily returns; you congratulate yourself that you

did not yield to the temptation to abandon your pursuit, and you proceed
with more vigour than ever. Five or six triumphs over temptation to
indolence or despair lay the foundation of certain success; and, what is of
still more importance, fix in you the habit of perseverance.
47. If I have bestowed a large portion of my space on this topic, it has been
because I know, from experience as well as from observation, that it is of
more importance than all the other branches of book-learning put together.
It gives you, when you possess it thoroughly, a real and practical superiority
over the far greater part of men. How often did I experience this even long
before I became what is called an author! The Adjutant, under whom it was
my duty to act when I was a Serjeant Major, was, as almost all military
officers are, or at least were, a very illiterate man, perceiving that every
sentence of mine was in the same form and manner as sentences in print,
became shy of letting me see pieces of his writing. The writing of orders,
and other things, therefore, fell to me; and thus, though no nominal addition
was made to my pay, and no nominal addition to my authority, I acquired
the latter as effectually as if a law had been passed to confer it upon me. In
short, I owe to the possession of this branch of knowledge everything that
has enabled me to do so many things that very few other men have done,
and that now gives me a degree of influence, such as is possessed by few
others, in the most weighty concerns of the country. The possession of this
branch of knowledge raises you in your own esteem, gives just confidence
in yourself, and prevents you from being the willing slave of the rich and
the titled part of the community. It enables you to discover that riches and
titles do not confer merit; you think comparatively little of them; and, as far
as relates to you, at any rate, their insolence is innoxious.
48. Hoping that I have said enough to induce you to set resolutely about the
study of grammar, I might here leave the subject of learning; arithmetic and
grammar, both well learned, being as much as I could wish in a mere youth.
But these need not occupy the whole of your spare time; and, there are other
branches of learning which ought immediately to follow. If your own
calling or profession require book-study, books treating of that are to be
preferred to all others; for, the first thing, the first object in life, is to secure
the honest means of obtaining sustenance, raiment, and a state of being
suitable to your rank, be that rank what it may: excellence in your own
calling is, therefore, the first thing to be aimed at. After this may come

general knowledge, and of this, the first is a thorough knowledge of your
own country; for, how ridiculous is it to see an English youth engaged in
reading about the customs of the Chinese or of the Hindoos, while he is
content to be totally ignorant of those of Kent or of Cornwall! Well
employed he must be in ascertaining how Greece was divided and how the
Romans parcelled out their territory, while he knows not, and apparently
does not want to know, how England came to be divided into counties,
hundreds, parishes and tithings.
49. GEOGRAPHY naturally follows Grammar; and you should begin with
that of this kingdom, which you ought to understand well, perfectly well,
before you venture to look abroad. A rather slight knowledge of the
divisions and customs of other countries is, generally speaking, sufficient;
but, not to know these full well, as far as relates to our own country, is, in
one who pretends to be a gentleman or a scholar, somewhat disgraceful. Yet
how many men are there, and those called gentlemen too, who seem to
think that counties and parishes, and churches and parsons, and tithes and
glebes, and manors and courts-leet, and paupers and poor-houses, all grew
up in England, or dropped down upon it, immediately after Noah's flood!
Surely, it is necessary for every man, having any pretensions to scholarship,
to know how these things came; and, the sooner this knowledge is acquired
the better; for, until it be acquired, you read the history of your country in
vain. Indeed, to communicate this knowledge is one main part of the
business of history; but it is a part which no historian, commonly so called,
has, that I know of, ever yet performed, except, in part, myself, in the
History of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION. I had read HUME'S
History of England, and the Continuation by SMOLLETT; but, in 1802,
when I wanted to write on the subject of the non-residence of the clergy, I
found, to my great mortification, that I knew nothing of the foundation of
the office and the claims of the parsons, and that I could not even guess at
the origin of parishes. This gave a new turn to my inquiries; and I soon
found the romancers, called historians, had given me no information that I
could rely on, and, besides, had done, apparently, all they could to keep me
in the dark.
50. When you come to HISTORY, begin also with that of your own country;
and here it is my bounden duty to put you well on your guard; for in this
respect we are peculiarly unfortunate, and for the following reasons, to

which I beg you to attend. Three hundred years ago, the religion of England
had been, during nine hundred years, the Catholic religion: the Catholic
clergy possessed about a third part of all the lands and houses, which they
held in trust for their own support, for the building and repairing of
churches, and for the relief of the poor, the widow, the orphan, and the
stranger; but, at the time just mentioned, the king and the aristocracy
changed the religion to Protestant, took the estates of the church and the
poor to themselves as their own property, and taxed the people at large for
the building and repairing of churches and for the relief of the poor. This
great and terrible change, effected partly by force against the people and
partly by the most artful means of deception, gave rise to a series of efforts,
which has been continued from that day to this, to cause us all to believe,
that that change was for the better, that it was for our good; and that, before
that time, our forefathers were a set of the most miserable slaves that the
sun ever warmed with his beams. It happened, too, that the art of printing
was not discovered, or, at least, it was very little understood, until about the
time when this change took place; so that the books relating to former times
were confined to manuscript; and, besides, even these manuscript libraries
were destroyed with great care by those who had made the change and had
grasped the property of the poor and the church. Our 'Historians,' as they
are called, have written under fear of the powerful, or have been bribed by
them; and, generally speaking, both at the same time; and, accordingly, their
works are, as far as they relate to former times, masses of lies unmatched by
any others that the world has ever seen.
51. The great object of these lies always has been to make the main body of
the people believe, that the nation is now more happy, more populous, more
powerful, than it was before it was Protestant, and thereby to induce us to
conclude, that it was a good thing for us that the aristocracy should take to
themselves the property of the poor and the church, and make the people at
large pay taxes for the support of both. This has been, and still is, the great
object of all those heaps of lies; and those lies are continually spread about
amongst us in all forms of publication, from heavy folios down to
halfpenny tracts. In refutation of those lies we have only very few and rare
ancient books to refer to, and their information is incidental, seeing that
their authors never dreamed of the possibility of the lying generations
which were to come. We have the ancient acts of parliament, the common-

law, the customs, the canons of the church, and the churches themselves; but
these demand analyses and argument, and they demand also a really free
press, and unprejudiced and patient readers. Never in this world, before,
had truth to struggle with so many and such great disadvantages!
52. To refute lies is not, at present, my business; but it is my business to
give you, in as small a compass as possible, one striking proof that they are
lies; and thereby to put you well upon your guard for the whole of the rest
of your life. The opinion sedulously inculcated by these 'historians' is this;
that, before the Protestant times came, England was, comparatively, an
insignificant country, having few people in it, and those few wretchedly
poor and miserable. Now, take the following undeniable facts. All the
parishes in England are now (except where they have been united, and two,
three, or four, have been made into one) in point of size, what they were a
thousand years ago. The county of Norfolk is the best cultivated of any one
in England. This county has now 731 parishes; and the number was
formerly greater. Of these parishes 22 have now no churches at all; 74
contain less than 100 souls each: and 268 have no parsonage-houses. Now,
observe, every parish had, in old times, a church and a parsonage-house.
The county contains 2,092 square miles; that is to say, something less than 3
square miles to each parish, and that is 1,920 statute acres of land; and the
size of each parish is, on an average, that of a piece of ground about one
mile and a half each way; so that the churches are, even now, on an average,
only about a mile and a half from each other. Now, the questions for you to
put to yourself are these: Were churches formerly built and kept up without
being wanted, and especially by a poor and miserable people? Did these
miserable people build 74 churches out of 731, each of which 74 had not a
hundred souls belonging to it? Is it a sign of an augmented population, that
22 churches out of 731 have tumbled down and been effaced? Was it a
country thinly inhabited by miserable people that could build and keep a
church in every piece of ground a mile and a half each way, besides having,
in this same county, 77 monastic establishments and 142 free chapels? Is it
a sign of augmented population, ease and plenty, that, out of 731 parishes,
268 have suffered the parsonage houses to fall into ruins, and their sites to
become patches of nettles and of brambles? Put these questions calmly to
yourself: common sense will dictate the answers; and truth will call for an

expression of your indignation against the lying historians and the still more
lying population-mongers.

LETTER II

TO A YOUNG MAN
53. In the foregoing Letter, I have given my advice to a Youth. In
addressing myself to you, I am to presume that you have entered upon your
present stage of life, having acted upon the precepts contained in that letter;
and that, of course, you are a sober, abstinent, industrious and well-
informed young man. In the succeeding letters, which will be addressed to
the Lover, the Husband, the Father and the Citizen, I shall, of course, have
to include my notion of your duties as a master, and as a person employed
by another. In the present letter, therefore, I shall confine myself principally
to the conduct of a young man with regard to the management of his means,
or money.
54. Be you in what line of life you may, it will be amongst your misfortunes
if you have not time properly to attend to this matter; for it very frequently
happens, it has happened to thousands upon thousands, not only to be
ruined, according to the common acceptation of the word; not only to be
made poor, and to suffer from poverty, in consequence of want of attention
to pecuniary matters; but it has frequently, and even generally, happened,
that a want of attention to these matters has impeded the progress of
science, and of genius itself. A man, oppressed with pecuniary cares and
dangers, must be next to a miracle, if he have his mind in a state fit for
intellectual labours; to say nothing of the temptations, arising from such
distress, to abandon good principles, to suppress useful opinions and useful
facts; and, in short, to become a disgrace to his kindred, and an evil to his
country, instead of being an honour to the former and a blessing to the
latter. To be poor and independent, is very nearly an impossibility.
55. But, then, poverty is not a positive, but a relative term. BURKE
observed, and very truly, that a labourer who earned a sufficiency to
maintain him as a labourer, and to maintain him in a suitable manner; to
give him a sufficiency of good food, of clothing, of lodging, and of fuel,
ought not to be called a poor man; for that, though he had little riches,
though his, compared with that of a lord, was a state of poverty, it was not a
state of poverty in itself. When, therefore, I say that poverty is the cause of

a depression of spirit, of inactivity and of servility in men of literary talent,
I must say, at the same time, that the evil arises from their own fault; from
their having created for themselves imaginary wants; from their having
indulged in unnecessary enjoyments, and from their having caused that to
be poverty, which would not have been poverty, if they had been moderate
in their enjoyments.
56. As it may be your lot (such has been mine) to live by your literary
talent, I will here, before I proceed to matter more applicable to persons in
other states of life, observe, that I cannot form an idea of a mortal more
wretched than a man of real talent, compelled to curb his genius, and to
submit himself in the exercise of that genius, to those whom he knows to be
far inferior to himself, and whom he must despise from the bottom of his
soul. The late Mr. WILLIAM GIFFORD, who was the son of a shoemaker
at ASHBURTON in Devonshire; who was put to school and sent to the
university at the expense of a generous and good clergyman of the name of
COOKSON, and who died, the other day, a sort of whipper-in of
MURRAY'S QUARTERLY REVIEW; this was a man of real genius; and,
to my certain personal knowledge, he detested, from the bottom of his soul,
the whole of the paper-money and Boroughmongering system, and despised
those by whom the system was carried on. But, he had imaginary wants; he
had been bred up in company with the rich and the extravagant; expensive
indulgences had been made necessary to him by habit; and, when in the
year 1798, or thereabouts, he had to choose between a bit of bacon, a scrag
of mutton, and a lodging at ten shillings a week, on the one side, and made-
dishes, wine, a fine house and a footman on the other side, he chose the
latter. He became the servile Editor of CANNING'S Anti-jacobin
newspaper; and he, who had more wit and learning than all the rest of the
writers put together, became the miserable tool in circulating their attacks
upon everything that was hostile to a system which he deplored and
detested. But he secured the made-dishes, the wine, the footman and the
coachman. A sinecure as 'clerk of the Foreign Estreats,' gave him 329l. a
year, a double commissionership of the lottery gave him 600l. or 700l.
more; and, at a later period, his Editorship of the Quarterly Review gave
him perhaps as much more. He rolled in his carriage for several years; he
fared sumptuously; he was buried at Westminster Abbey, of which his friend
and formerly his brother pamphleteer in defence of PITT was the Dean; and

never is he to be heard of more! Mr. GIFFORD would have been full as
happy; his health would have been better, his life longer, and his name
would have lived for ages, if he could have turned to the bit of bacon and
scrag of mutton in 1798; for his learning and talents were such, his
reasonings so clear and conclusive, and his wit so pointed and keen, that his
writings must have been generally read, must have been of long duration!
and, indeed, must have enabled him (he being always a single man) to live
in his latter days in as good style as that which he procured by becoming a
sinecurist, a pensioner and a hack, all which he was from the moment he
lent himself to the Quarterly Review. Think of the mortification of such a
man, when he was called upon to justify the power-of-imprisonment bill in
1817! But to go into particulars would be tedious: his life was a life of
luxurious misery, than which a worse is not to be imagined.
57. So that poverty is, except where there is an actual want of food and
raiment, a thing much more imaginary than real. The shame of poverty, the
shame of being thought poor, is a great and fatal weakness, though arising,
in this country, from the fashion of the times themselves. When a good man,
as in the phraseology of the city, means a rich man, we are not to wonder
that every one wishes to be thought richer than he is. When adulation is sure
to follow wealth, and when contempt would be awarded to many if they
were not wealthy, who are spoken of with deference, and even lauded to the
skies, because their riches are great and notorious; when this is the case, we
are not to be surprised that men are ashamed to be thought to be poor. This
is one of the greatest of all the dangers at the outset of life: it has brought
thousands and hundreds of thousands to ruin, even to pecuniary ruin. One
of the most amiable features in the character of American society is this;
that men never boast of their riches, and never disguise their poverty; but
they talk of both as of any other matter fit for public conversation. No man
shuns another because he is poor: no man is preferred to another because he
is rich. In hundreds and hundreds of instances, men, not worth a shilling,
have been chosen by the people and entrusted with their rights and interests,
in preference to men who ride in their carriages.
58. This shame of being thought poor, is not only dishonourable in itself,
and fatally injurious to men of talent; but it is ruinous even in a pecuniary
point of view, and equally destructive to farmers, traders, and even
gentlemen of landed estate. It leads to everlasting efforts to disguise one's

poverty: the carriage, the servants, the wine, (oh, that fatal wine!) the spirits,
the decanters, the glasses, all the table apparatus, the dress, the horses, the
dinners, the parties, all must be kept up; not so much because he or she who
keeps or gives them, has any pleasure arising therefrom, as because not to
keep and give them, would give rise to a suspicion of the want of means so
to give and keep; and thus thousands upon thousands are yearly brought
into a state of real poverty by their great anxiety not to be thought poor.
Look round you, mark well what you behold, and say if this be not the case.
In how many instances have you seen most amiable and even most
industrious families brought to ruin by nothing but this! Mark it well;
resolve to set this false shame at defiance, and when you have done that,
you have laid the first stone of the surest foundation of your future
tranquillity of mind. There are thousands of families, at this very moment,
who are thus struggling to keep up appearances. The farmers accommodate
themselves to circumstances more easily than tradesmen and professional
men. They live at a greater distance from their neighbours: they can change
their style of living unperceived: they can banish the decanter, change the
dishes for a bit of bacon, make a treat out of a rasher and eggs, and the
world is none the wiser all the while. But the tradesman, the doctor, the
attorney, and the trader, cannot make the change so quietly, and unseen. The
accursed wine, which is a sort of criterion of the style of living, a sort of
scale to the plan, a sort of key to the tune; this is the thing to banish first of
all; because all the rest follow, and come down to their proper level in a
short time. The accursed decanter cries footman or waiting maid, puts bells
to the side of the wall, screams aloud for carpets; and when I am asked,
'Lord, what is a glass of wine?' my answer is, that, in this country, it is
everything; it is the pitcher of the key; it demands all the other unnecessary
expenses; it is injurious to health, and must be injurious, every bottle of
wine that is drunk containing a certain portion of ardent spirits, besides
other drugs deleterious in their nature; and, of all the friends to the doctors,
this fashionable beverage is the greatest. And, which adds greatly to the
folly, or, I should say, the real vice of using it, is, that the parties
themselves, nine times out of ten, do not drink it by choice; do not like it;
do not relish it; but use it from mere ostentation, being ashamed to be seen
even by their own servants, not to drink wine. At the very moment I am
writing this, there are thousands of families in and near London, who daily
have wine upon their tables, and who drink it too, merely because their own

servants should not suspect them to be poor, and not deem them to be
genteel; and thus families by thousands are ruined, only because they are
ashamed to be thought poor.
59. There is no shame belonging to poverty, which frequently arises from
the virtues of the impoverished parties. Not so frequently, indeed, as from
vice, folly, and indiscretion; but still very frequently. And as the Scripture
tells us, that we are not to 'despise the poor because he is poor'; so we ought
not to honour the rich because he is rich. The true way is, to take a fair
survey of the character of a man as depicted in his conduct, and to respect
him, or despise him, according to a due estimate of that character. No
country upon earth exhibits so many, as this, of those fatal terminations of
life, called suicides. These arise, in nine instances out of ten, from this very
source. The victims are, in general, what may be fairly called insane; but
their insanity almost always arises from the dread of poverty; not from the
dread of a want of the means of sustaining life, or even decent living, but
from the dread of being thought or known to be poor; from the dread of
what is called falling in the scale of society; a dread which is prevalent
hardly in any country but this. Looked at in its true light, what is there in
poverty to make a man take away his own life? he is the same man that he
was before: he has the same body and the same mind: if he even foresee a
great alteration in his dress or his diet, why should he kill himself on that
account? Are these all the things that a man wishes to live for? But, such is
the fact; so great is the disgrace upon this country, and so numerous and
terrible are the evils arising from this dread of being thought to be poor.
60. Nevertheless, men ought to take care of their means, ought to use them
prudently and sparingly, and to keep their expenses always within the
bounds of their income, be it what it may. One of the effectual means of
doing this is to purchase with ready money. ST. PAUL says, 'Owe no man
any thing:' and of his numerous precepts this is by no means the least
worthy of our attention. Credit has been boasted of as a very fine thing: to
decry credit seems to be setting oneself up against the opinions of the whole
world; and I remember a paper in the FREEHOLDER or the SPECTATOR,
published just after the funding system had begun, representing 'PUBLIC
Credit' as a GODDESS, enthroned in a temple dedicated to her by her
votaries, amongst whom she is dispensing blessings of every description. It
must be more than forty years since I read this paper, which I read soon

after the time when the late Mr. PITT uttered in Parliament an expression of
his anxious hope, that his 'name would be inscribed on the monument which
he should raise to 'public credit.' Time has taught me, that PUBLIC
CREDIT means, the contracting of debts which a nation never can pay; and
I have lived to see this Goddess produce effects, in my country, which Satan
himself never could have produced. It is a very bewitching Goddess; and
not less fatal in her influence in private than in public affairs. It has been
carried in this latter respect to such a pitch, that scarcely any transaction,
however low and inconsiderable in amount, takes place in any other way.
There is a trade in London, called the 'tally-trade,' by which, household
goods, coals, clothing, all sorts of things, are sold upon credit, the seller
keeping a tally, and receiving payment for the goods, little by little; so that
the income and the earnings of the buyers are always anticipated; are
always gone, in fact, before they come in or are earned; the sellers
receiving, of course, a great deal more than the proper profit.
61. Without supposing you to descend to so low a grade as this, and even
supposing you to be lawyer, doctor, parson, or merchant; it is still the same
thing, if you purchase on credit, and not, perhaps, in a much less degree of
disadvantage. Besides the higher price that you pay there is the temptation
to have what you really do not want. The cost seems a trifle, when you have
not to pay the money until a future time. It has been observed, and very
truly observed, that men used to lay out a one-pound note when they would
not lay out a sovereign; a consciousness of the intrinsic value of the things
produces a retentiveness in the latter case more than in the former: the sight
and the touch assist the mind in forming its conclusions, and the one-pound
note was parted with, when the sovereign would have been kept. Far greater
is the difference between Credit and Ready money. Innumerable things are
not bought at all with ready money, which would be bought in case of trust:
it is so much easier to order a thing than to pay for it. A future day; a day of
payment must come, to be sure, but that is little thought of at the time; but if
the money were to be drawn out, the moment the thing was received or
offered, this question would arise, 'Can I do without it?' Is this thing
indispensable; am I compelled to have it, or suffer a loss or injury greater in
amount than the cost of the thing? If this question were put, every time we
make a purchase, seldom should we hear of those suicides which are such a
disgrace to this country.

62. I am aware, that it will be said, and very truly said, that the concerns of
merchants; that the purchasing of great estates, and various other great
transactions, cannot be carried on in this manner; but these are rare
exceptions to the rule; even in these cases there might be much less of bills
and bonds, and all the sources of litigation; but in the every-day business of
life; in transactions with the butcher, the baker, the tailor, the shoemaker,
what excuse can there be for pleading the example of the merchant, who
carries on his work by ships and exchanges? I was delighted, some time
ago, by being told of a young man, who, upon being advised to keep a little
account of all he received and expended, answered, 'that his business was
not to keep account books: that he was sure not to make a mistake as to his
income; and that, as to his expenditure, the little bag that held his
sovereigns would be an infallible guide, as he never bought anything that he
did not immediately pay for.'
63. I believe that nobody will deny, that, generally speaking, you pay for the
same article a fourth part more in the case of trust than you do in the case of
ready money. Suppose, then, the baker, butcher, tailor, and shoemaker,
receive from you only one hundred pounds a year. Put that together; that is
to say, multiply twenty-five by twenty, and you will find, that, at the end of
twenty years, you have 500l., besides the accumulating and growing
interest. The fathers of the Church (I mean the ancient ones), and also the
canons of the Church, forbade selling on trust at a higher price than for
ready money, which was in effect to forbid trust; and this, doubtless, was
one of the great objects which those wise and pious men had in view; for
they were fathers in legislation and morals as well as in religion. But the
doctrine of these fathers and canons no longer prevails; they are set at
nought by the present age, even in the countries that adhere to their religion.
ADDISON'S Goddess has prevailed over the fathers and the canons; and
men not only make a difference in the price regulated by the difference in
the mode of payment; but it would be absurd to expect them to do
otherwise. They must not only charge something for the want of the use of
the money; but they must charge something additional for the risk of its
loss, which may frequently arise, and most frequently does arise, from the
misfortunes of those to whom they have assigned their goods on trust. The
man, therefore, who purchases on trust, not only pays for the trust, but he
also pays his due share of what the tradesman loses by trust; and, after all,

he is not so good a customer as the man who purchases cheaply with ready
money; for there is his name indeed in the tradesman's book; but with that
name the tradesman cannot go to market to get a fresh supply.
64. Infinite are the ways in which gentlemen lose by this sort of dealing.
Servants go and order sometimes things not wanted at all; at other times,
more than is wanted; at others, things of a higher quality; and all this would
be obviated by purchasing with ready money; for, whether through the
hands of the party himself, or through those of an inferior, there would
always be an actual counting out of the money; somebody would see the
thing bought and see the money paid; and, as the master would give the
housekeeper or steward a bag of money at the time, he would see the money
too, would set a proper value upon it, and would just desire to know upon
what it had been expended.
65. How is it that farmers are so exact, and show such a disposition to
retrench in the article of labour, when they seem to think little, or nothing,
about the sums which they pay in tax upon malt, wine, sugar, tea, soap,
candles, tobacco, and various other things? You find the utmost difficulty in
making them understand, that they are affected by these. The reason is, that
they see the money which they give to the labourer on each succeeding
Saturday night; but they do not see that which they give in taxes on the
articles before mentioned. Why is it that they make such an outcry about the
six or seven millions a year which are paid in poor-rates, and say not a word
about the sixty millions a year raised in other taxes? The consumer pays all;
and, therefore, they are as much interested in the one as the other; and yet
the farmers think of no tax but the poor tax. The reason is, that the latter is
collected from them in money: they see it go out of their hands into the
hands of another; and, therefore, they are everlastingly anxious to reduce
the poor-rates, and they take care to keep them within the smallest possible
bounds.
66. Just thus would it be with every man that never purchased but with
ready money: he would make the amount as low as possible in proportion to
his means: this care and frugality would make an addition to his means, and
therefore, in the end, at the end of his life, he would have had a great deal
more to spend, and still be as rich as if he had gone in trust; while he would
have lived in tranquillity all the while, and would have avoided all the

endless papers and writings and receipts and bills and disputes and law-suits
inseparable from a system of credit. This is by no means a lesson of
stinginess; by no means tends to inculcate a heaping up of money; for the
purchasing with ready money really gives you more money to purchase
with; you can afford to have a greater quantity and variety of things; and I
will engage that, if horses or servants be your taste, the saving in this way
gives you an additional horse or an additional servant, if you be in any
profession or engaged in any considerable trade. In towns, it tends to
accelerate your pace along the streets; for the temptation of the windows is
answered in a moment by clapping your hand upon your thigh; and the
question, 'Do I really want that?' is sure to occur to you immediately,
because the touch of the money is sure to put that thought in your mind.
67. Now, supposing you to have a plenty; to have a fortune beyond your
wants, would not the money which you would save in this way be very well
applied in acts of real benevolence? Can you walk many yards in the
streets; can you ride a mile in the country; can you go to half-a-dozen
cottages; can you, in short, open your eyes, without seeing some human
being, some one born in the same country with yourself, and who, on that
account alone, has some claim upon your good wishes and your charity; can
you open your eyes without seeing some person to whom even a small
portion of your annual savings would convey gladness of heart? Your own
heart will suggest the answer; and, if there were no motive but this, what
need I say more in the advice which I have here tendered to you?
68. Another great evil arising from this desire to be thought rich; or, rather
from the desire not to be thought poor, is the destructive thing which has
been honoured by the name of 'speculation;' but which ought to be called
Gambling. It is a purchasing of something which you do not want either in
your family or in the way of ordinary trade: a something to be sold again
with a great profit; and on the sale of which there is a considerable hazard.
When purchases of this sort are made with ready money, they are not so
offensive to reason and not attended with such risk; but when they are made
with money borrowed for the purpose, they are neither more nor less than
gambling transactions; and they have been, in this country, a source of ruin,
misery, and suicide, admitting of no adequate description. I grant that this
gambling has arisen from the influence of the 'Goddess' before mentioned; I
grant that it has arisen from the facility of obtaining the fictitious means of

making the purchases; and I grant that that facility has been created by the
system under the baneful influence of which we live. But it is not the less
necessary that I beseech you not to practise such gambling; that I beseech
you, if you be engaged in it, to disentangle yourself from it as soon as you
can. Your life, while you are thus engaged, is the life of the gamester; a life
of constant anxiety; constant desire to over-reach; constant apprehension;
general gloom, enlivened, now and then, by a gleam of hope or of success.
Even that success is sure to lead to further adventures; and, at last, a
thousand to one, that your fate is that of the pitcher to the well.
69. The great temptation to this gambling is, as is the case in other
gambling, the success of the few. As young men who crowd to the army, in
search of rank and renown, never look into the ditch that holds their
slaughtered companions; but have their eye constantly fixed on the General-
in-chief; and as each of them belongs to the same profession, and is sure to
be conscious that he has equal merit, every one deems himself the suitable
successor of him who is surrounded with Aides des camps, and who moves
battalions and columns by his nod; so with the rising generation of
'speculators:' they see the great estates that have succeeded the pencil-box
and the orange-basket; they see those whom nature and good laws made to
black shoes, sweep chimnies or the streets, rolling in carriages, or sitting in
saloons surrounded by gaudy footmen with napkins twisted round their
thumbs; and they can see no earthly reason why they should not all do the
same; forgetting the thousands and thousands, who, in making the attempt,
have reduced themselves to that beggary which, before their attempt, they
would have regarded as a thing wholly impossible.
70. In all situations of life, avoid the trammels of the law. Man's nature
must be changed before law-suits will cease; and, perhaps, it would be next
to impossible to make them less frequent than they are in the present state
of this country; but though no man, who has any property at all, can say that
he will have nothing to do with law-suits, it is in the power of most men to
avoid them in a considerable degree. One good rule is to have as little as
possible to do with any man who is fond of law-suits, and who, upon every
slight occasion, talks of an appeal to the law. Such persons, from their
frequent litigations, contract a habit of using the technical terms of the
Courts, in which they take a pride, and are, therefore, companions
peculiarly disgusting to men of sense. To such men a law-suit is a luxury,

instead of being as it is, to men of ordinary minds, a source of anxiety and a
real and substantial scourge. Such men are always of a quarrelsome
disposition, and avail themselves of every opportunity to indulge in that
which is mischievous to their neighbours. In thousands of instances men go
to law for the indulgence of mere anger. The Germans are said to bring
spite-actions against one another, and to harass their poorer neighbours
from motives of pure revenge. They have carried this their disposition with
them to America; for which reason no one likes to live in a German
neighbourhood.
71. Before you go to law consider well the cost; for if you win your suit and
are poorer than you were before, what do you accomplish? You only imbibe
a little additional anger against your opponent; you injure him, but do harm
to yourself. Better to put up with the loss of one pound than of two, to
which latter is to be added all the loss of time, all the trouble, and all the
mortification and anxiety attending a law-suit. To set an attorney to work to
worry and torment another man is a very base act; to alarm his family as
well as himself, while you are sitting quietly at home. If a man owe you
money which he cannot pay, why add to his distress without the chance of
benefit to yourself? Thousands of men have injured themselves by resorting
to the law; while very few ever bettered themselves by it, except such resort
were unavoidable.
72. Nothing is much more discreditable than what is called hard dealing.
They say of the Turks, that they know nothing of two prices for the same
article; and that to ask an abatement of the lowest shopkeeper is to insult
him. It would be well if Christians imitated Mahometans in this respect. To
ask one price and take another, or to offer one price and give another,
besides the loss of time that it occasions, is highly dishonourable to the
parties, and especially when pushed to the extent of solemn protestations. It
is, in fact, a species of lying; and it answers no one advantageous purpose to
either buyer or seller. I hope that every young man who reads this, will start
in life with a resolution never to higgle and lie in dealings. There is this
circumstance in favour of the bookseller's business: every book has its fixed
price, and no one ever asks an abatement. If it were thus in all other trades,
how much time would be saved, and how much immorality prevented!

73. As to the spending of your time, your business or your profession is to
claim the priority of everything else. Unless that be duly attended to, there
can be no real pleasure in any other employment of a portion of your time.
Men, however, must have some leisure, some relaxation from business; and
in the choice of this relaxation much of your happiness will depend. Where
fields and gardens are at hand, they present the most rational scenes for
leisure. As to company, I have said enough in the former letter to deter any
young man from that of drunkards and rioting companions; but there is such
a thing as your quiet 'pipe-and-pot-companions,' which are, perhaps, the
most fatal of all. Nothing can be conceived more dull, more stupid, more
the contrary of edification and rational amusement, than sitting, sotting,
over a pot and a glass, sending out smoke from the head, and articulating, at
intervals, nonsense about all sorts of things. Seven years service as a galley-
slave would be more bearable to a man of sense, than seven months
confinement to society like this. Yet, such is the effect of habit, that, if a
young man become a frequenter of such scenes, the idle propensity sticks to
him for life. Some companions, however, every man must have; but these
every well-behaved man will find in private houses, where families are
found residing and where the suitable intercourse takes place between
women and men. A man that cannot pass an evening without drink merits
the name of a sot. Why should there be drink for the purpose of carrying on
conversation? Women stand in need of no drink to stimulate them to
converse; and I have a thousand times admired their patience in sitting
quietly at their work, while their husbands are engaged, in the same room,
with bottles and glasses before them, thinking nothing of the expense and
still less of the shame which the distinction reflects upon them. We have to
thank the women for many things, and particularly for their sobriety, for
fear of following their example in which men drive them from the table, as
if they said to them: 'You have had enough; food is sufficient for you; but
we must remain to fill ourselves with drink, and to talk in language which
your ears ought not to endure.' When women are getting up to retire from
the table, men rise in honour of them; but they take special care not to
follow their excellent example. That which is not fit to be uttered before
women is not fit to be uttered at all; and it is next to a proclamation,
tolerating drunkenness and indecency, to send women from the table the
moment they have swallowed their food. The practice has been ascribed to
a desire to leave them to themselves; but why should they be left to

themselves? Their conversation is always the most lively, while their
persons are generally the most agreeable objects. No: the plain truth is, that
it is the love of the drink and of the indecent talk that send women from the
table; and it is a practice which I have always abhorred. I like to see young
men, especially, follow them out of the room, and prefer their company to
that of the sots who are left behind.
74. Another mode of spending the leisure time is that of books. Rational and
well-informed companions may be still more instructive; but books never
annoy; they cost little; and they are always at hand, and ready at your call.
The sort of books must, in some degree, depend upon your pursuit in life;
but there are some books necessary to every one who aims at the character
of a well-informed man. I have slightly mentioned HISTORY and
Geography in the preceding letter; but I must here observe, that, as to both
these, you should begin with your own country, and make yourself well
acquainted, not only with its ancient state, but with the origin of all its
principal institutions. To read of the battles which it has fought, and of the
intrigues by which one king or one minister has succeeded another, is very
little more profitable than the reading of a romance. To understand well the
history of the country, you should first understand how it came to be
divided into counties, hundreds, and into parishes; how judges, sheriffs, and
juries, first arose; to what end they were all invented, and how the changes
with respect to any of them have been produced. But it is of particular
consequence that you ascertain the state of the people in former times,
which is to be ascertained by comparing the then price of labour with the
then price of food. You hear enough, and you read enough, about the
glorious wars in the reign of KING EDWARD the THIRD; and it is very
proper that those glories should be recorded and remembered; but you never
read, in the works of the historians, that, in that reign, a common labourer
earned threepence-halfpenny a day; and that a fat sheep was sold, at the
same time, for one shilling and twopence, and a fat hog, two years old, for
three shillings and fourpence, and a fat goose for twopence-halfpenny. You
never read that women received a penny a day for hay-making or weeding
in the corn, and that a gallon of red wine was sold for fourpence. These are
matters which historians have deemed to be beneath their notice; but they
are matters of real importance: they are matters which ought to have
practical effect at this time; for these furnish the criterion whereby we are to

judge of our condition compared with that of our forefathers. The poor-rates
form a great feature in the laws and customs of this country. Put to a
thousand persons who have read what is called the history of England; put
to them the question, how the poor-rates came? and nine hundred and
ninety-nine of the thousand will tell you, that they know nothing at all of
the matter. This is not history; a list of battles and a string of intrigues are
not history, they communicate no knowledge applicable to our present state;
and it really is better to amuse oneself with an avowed romance, which
latter is a great deal worse than passing one's time in counting the trees.
75. History has been described as affording arguments of experience; as a
record of what has been, in order to guide us as to what is likely to be, or
what ought to be; but, from this romancing history, no such experience is to
be derived: for it furnishes no facts on which to found arguments relative to
the existing or future state of things. To come at the true history of a country
you must read its laws: you must read books treating of its usages and
customs in former times; and you must particularly inform yourself as to
prices of labour and of food. By reading the single Act of the 23rd year of
EDWARD the THIRD, specifying the price of labour at that time; by
reading an Act of Parliament passed in the 24th year of HENRY the
EIGHTH; by reading these two Acts, and then reading the CHRONICON
PRECIOSUM of BISHOP FLEETWOOD, which shows the price of food
in the former reign, you come into full possession of the knowledge of what
England was in former times. Divers books teach how the divisions of the
country arose, and how its great institutions were established; and the result
of this reading is a store of knowledge, which will afford you pleasure for
the whole of your life.
76. History, however, is by no means the only thing about which every
man's leisure furnishes him with the means of reading; besides which, every
man has not the same taste. Poetry, geography, moral essays, the divers
subjects of philosophy, travels, natural history, books on sciences; and, in
short, the whole range of book-knowledge is before you; but there is one
thing always to be guarded against; and that is, not to admire and applaud
anything you read, merely because it is the fashion to admire and applaud it.
Read, consider well what you read, form your own judgment, and stand by
that judgment in despite of the sayings of what are called learned men, until
fact or argument be offered to convince you of your error. One writer

praises another; and it is very possible for writers so to combine as to cry
down and, in some sort, to destroy the reputation of any one who meddles
with the combination, unless the person thus assailed be blessed with
uncommon talent and uncommon perseverance. When I read the works of
POPE and of SWIFT, I was greatly delighted with their lashing of
DENNIS; but wondered, at the same time, why they should have taken so
much pains in running down such a fool. By the merest accident in the
world, being at a tavern in the woods of America, I took up an old book, in
order to pass away the time while my travelling companions were drinking
in the next room; but seeing the book contained the criticisms of DENNIS, I
was about to lay it down, when the play of 'CATO' caught my eye; and
having been accustomed to read books in which this play was lauded to the
skies, and knowing it to have been written by ADDISON, every line of
whose works I had been taught to believe teemed with wisdom and genius,
I condescended to begin to read, though the work was from the pen of that
fool DENNIS. I read on, and soon began to laugh, not at Dennis, but at
Addison. I laughed so much and so loud, that the landlord, who was in the
passage, came in to see what I was laughing at. In short, I found it a most
masterly production, one of the most witty things that I had ever read in my
life. I was delighted with DENNIS, and was heartily ashamed of my former
admiration of CATO, and felt no little resentment against POPE and SWIFT
for their endless reviling of this most able and witty critic. This, as far as I
recollect, was the first emancipation that had assisted me in my reading. I
have, since that time, never taken any thing upon trust: I have judged for
myself, trusting neither to the opinions of writers nor in the fashions of the
day. Having been told by DR. BLAIR, in his lectures on Rhetoric, that, if I
meant to write correctly, I must 'give my days and nights to ADDISON,' I
read a few numbers of the Spectator at the time I was writing my English
Grammar: I gave neither my nights nor my days to him; but I found an
abundance of matter to afford examples of false grammar; and, upon a
reperusal, I found that the criticisms of DENNIS might have been extended
to this book too.
77. But that which never ought to have been forgotten by those who were
men at the time, and that which ought to be made known to every young
man of the present day, in order that he may be induced to exercise his own
judgment with regard to books, is, the transactions relative to the writings

of SHAKSPEARE, which transactions took place about thirty years ago. It
is still, and it was then much more, the practice to extol every line of
SHAKSPEARE to the skies: not to admire SHAKSPEARE has been
deemed to be a proof of want of understanding and taste. MR. GARRICK,
and some others after him, had their own good and profitable reasons for
crying up the works of this poet. When I was a very little boy, there was a
jubilee in honour of SHAKSPEARE, and as he was said to have planted a
Mulberry tree, boxes, and other little ornamental things in wood, were sold
all over the country, as having been made out of the trunk or limbs of this
ancient and sacred tree. We Protestants laugh at the relics so highly prized
by Catholics; but never was a Catholic people half so much duped by the
relics of saints, as this nation was by the mulberry tree, of which, probably,
more wood was sold than would have been sufficient in quantity to build a
ship of war, or a large house. This madness abated for some years; but,
towards the end of the last century it broke out again with more fury than
ever. SHAKSPEARE'S works were published by BOYDELL, an Alderman
of London, at a subscription of five hundred pounds for each copy,
accompanied by plates, each forming a large picture. Amongst the mad men
of the day was a MR. IRELAND, who seemed to be more mad than any of
the rest. His adoration of the poet led him to perform a pilgrimage to an old
farm-house, near Stratford-upon-Avon, said to have been the birth-place of
the poet. Arrived at the spot, he requested the farmer and his wife to let him
search the house for papers, first going upon his knees, and praying, in the
poetic style, the gods to aid him in his quest. He found no papers; but he
found that the farmer's wife, in clearing out a garret some years before, had
found some rubbishy old papers which she had burnt, and which had
probably been papers used in the wrapping up of pigs' cheeks to keep them
from the bats. 'O, wretched woman!' exclaimed he; 'do you know what you
have done?' 'O dear, no!' said the woman, half frightened out of her wits: 'no
harm, I hope; for the papers were very old; I dare say as old as the house
itself.' This threw him into an additional degree of excitement, as it is now
fashionably called: he raved, he stamped, he foamed, and at last quitted the
house, covering the poor woman with very term of reproach; and hastening
back to Stratford, took post-chaise for London, to relate to his brother
madmen the horrible sacrilege of this heathenish woman. Unfortunately for
MR. IRELAND, unfortunately for his learned brothers in the metropolis,
and unfortunately for the reputation of SHAKSPEARE, MR. IRELAND

took with him to the scene of his adoration a son, about sixteen years of
age, who was articled to an attorney in London. The son was by no means
so sharply bitten as the father; and, upon returning to town, he conceived
the idea of supplying the place of the invaluable papers which the farm-
house heathen had destroyed. He thought, and he thought rightly, that he
should have little difficulty in writing plays just like those of Shakspeare!
To get paper that should seem to have been made in the reign of QUEEN
ELIZABETH, and ink that should give to writing the appearance of having
the same age, was somewhat difficult; but both were overcome. Young
IRELAND was acquainted with a son of a bookseller, who dealt in old
books: the blank leaves of these books supplied the young author with
paper; and he found out the way of making proper ink for his purpose. To
work he went, wrote several plays, some love-letters, and other things; and
having got a Bible, extant in the time of SHAKSPEARE, he wrote notes in
the margin. All these, together with sonnets in abundance, and other little
detached pieces, he produced to his father, telling him he got them from a
gentleman, who had made him swear that he would not divulge his name.
The father announced the invaluable discovery to the literary world: the
literary world rushed to him; the manuscripts were regarded as genuine by
the most grave and learned Doctors, some of whom (and amongst these
were DOCTORS PARR and WARTON) gave, under their hands, an
opinion, that the manuscripts must have been written by SHAKSPEARE;
for that no other man in the world could have been capable of writing them!
78. MR. IRELAND opened a subscription, published these new and
invaluable manuscripts at an enormous price; and preparations were
instantly made for performing one of the plays, called VORTIGERN. Soon
after the acting of the play, the indiscretion of the lad caused the secret to
explode; and, instantly, those who had declared that he had written as well
as SHAKSPEARE, did every thing in their power to destroy him! The
attorney drove him from his office; the father drove him from his house;
and, in short, he was hunted down as if he had been a malefactor of the
worst description. The truth of this relation is undeniable; it is recorded in
numberless books. The young man is, I believe, yet alive; and, in short, no
man will question any one of the facts.
79. After this, where is the person of sense who will be guided in these
matters by fashion? where is the man, who wishes not to be deluded, who

will not, when he has read a book, judge for himself? After all these jubilees
and pilgrimages; after BOYDELL'S subscription of 500l. for one single
copy; after it had been deemed almost impiety to doubt of the genius of
SHAKSPEARE surpassing that of all the rest of mankind; after he had been
called the 'Immortal Bard,' as a matter of course, as we speak of MOSES
and AARON, there having been but one of each in the world; after all this,
comes a lad of sixteen years of age, writes that which learned Doctors
declare could have been written by no man but SHAKSPEARE, and, when
it is discovered that this laughing boy is the real author, the DOCTORS turn
round upon him, with all the newspapers, magazines, and reviews, and, of
course, the public at their back, revile him as an impostor; and, under that
odious name, hunt him out of society, and doom him to starve! This lesson,
at any rate, he has given us: not to rely on the judgment of Doctors and
other pretenders to literary superiority. Every young man, when he takes up
a book for the first time, ought to remember this story; and if he do
remember it, he will disregard fashion with regard to the book, and will pay
little attention to the decision of those who call themselves critics.
80. I hope that your taste would keep you aloof from the writings of those
detestable villains, who employ the powers of their mind in debauching the
minds of others, or in endeavours to do it. They present their poison in such
captivating forms, that it requires great virtue and resolution to withstand
their temptations; and, they have, perhaps, done a thousand times as much
mischief in the world as all the infidels and atheists put together. These men
ought to be called literary pimps: they ought to be held in universal
abhorrence, and never spoken of but with execration. Any appeal to bad
passions is to be despised; any appeal to ignorance and prejudice; but here
is an appeal to the frailties of human nature, and an endeavour to make the
mind corrupt, just as it is beginning to possess its powers. I never have
known any but bad men, worthless men, men unworthy of any portion of
respect, who took delight in, or even kept in their possession, writings of
the description to which I here allude. The writings of SWIFT have this
blemish; and, though he is not a teacher of lewdness, but rather the contrary,
there are certain parts of his poems which are much too filthy for any
decent person to read. It was beneath him to stoop to such means of setting
forth that wit which would have been far more brilliant without them. I
have heard, that, in the library of what is called an 'illustrious person,' sold

some time ago, there was an immense collection of books of this infamous
description; and from this circumstance, if from no other, I should have
formed my judgment of the character of that person.
81. Besides reading, a young man ought to write, if he have the capacity
and the leisure. If you wish to remember a thing well, put it into writing,
even if you burn the paper immediately after you have done; for the eye
greatly assists the mind. Memory consists of a concatenation of ideas, the
place, the time, and other circumstances, lead to the recollection of facts;
and no circumstance more effectually than stating the facts upon paper. A
JOURNAL should be kept by every young man. Put down something
against every day in the year, if it be merely a description of the weather.
You will not have done this for one year without finding the benefit of it. It
disburthens the mind of many things to be recollected; it is amusing and
useful, and ought by no means to be neglected. How often does it happen
that we cannot make a statement of facts, sometimes very interesting to
ourselves and our friends, for the want of a record of the places where we
were, and of things that occurred on such and such a day! How often does it
happen that we get into disagreeable disputes about things that have passed,
and about the time and other circumstances attending them! As a thing of
mere curiosity, it is of some value, and may frequently prove of very great
utility. It demands not more than a minute in the twenty-four hours; and that
minute is most agreeably and advantageously employed. It tends greatly to
produce regularity in the conducting of affairs: it is a thing demanding a
small portion of attention once in every day; I myself have found it to be
attended with great and numerous benefits, and I therefore strongly
recommend it to the practice of every reader.

LETTER III

TO A LOVER
82. There are two descriptions of Lovers on whom all advice would be
wasted; namely, those in whose minds passion so wholly overpowers reason
as to deprive the party of his sober senses. Few people are entitled to more
compassion than young men thus affected: it is a species of insanity that
assails them; and, when it produces self-destruction, which it does in
England more frequently than in all the other countries in the world put
together, the mortal remains of the sufferer ought to be dealt with in as
tender a manner as that of which the most merciful construction of the law
will allow. If SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY'S remains were, as they were, in
fact, treated as those of a person labouring under 'temporary mental
derangement,' surely the youth who destroys his life on account of
unrequited love, ought to be considered in as mild a light! SIR SAMUEL
was represented, in the evidence taken before the Coroner's Jury, to have
been inconsolable for the loss of his wife; that this loss had so dreadful an
effect upon his mind, that it bereft him of his reason, made life
insupportable, and led him to commit the act of suicide: and, on this ground
alone, his remains and his estate were rescued from the awful, though just
and wise, sentence of the law. But, unfortunately for the reputation of the
administration of that just and wise law, there had been, only about two
years before, a poor man, at Manchester, buried in crossroads, and under
circumstances which entitled his remains to mercy much more clearly than
in the case of SIR SAMUEL ROMILLY.
83. This unfortunate youth, whose name was SMITH, and who was a
shoemaker, was in love with a young woman, who, in spite of all his
importunities and his proofs of ardent passion, refused to marry him, and
even discovered her liking for another; and he, unable to support life,
accompanied by the thought of her being in possession of any body but
himself, put an end to his life by the means of a rope. If, in any case, we are
to presume the existence of insanity; if, in any case, we are led to believe
the thing without positive proof; if, in any case, there can be an apology in
human nature itself, for such an act; this was that case. We all know (as I
observed at the time); that is to say, all of us who cannot wait to calculate

upon the gains and losses of the affair; all of us, except those who are
endowed with this provident frigidity, know well what youthful love is; and
what its torments are, when accompanied by even the smallest portion of
jealousy. Every man, and especially every Englishman (for here we seldom
love or hate by halves), will recollect how many mad pranks he has played;
how many wild and ridiculous things he has said and done between the age
of sixteen and that of twenty-two; how many times a kind glance has
scattered all his reasoning and resolutions to the winds; how many times a
cool look has plunged him into the deepest misery! Poor SMITH, who was
at this age of love and madness, might, surely, be presumed to have done
the deed in a moment of 'temporary mental derangement.' He was an object
of compassion in every humane breast: he had parents and brethren and
kindred and friends to lament his death, and to feel shame at the disgrace
inflicted on his lifeless body: yet, HE was pronounced to be a felo de se, or
self-murderer, and his body was put into a hole by the way-side, with a
stake driven down through it; while that of ROMILLY had mercy extended
to it, on the ground that the act had been occasioned by 'temporary mental
derangement' caused by his grief for the death of his wife!
84. To reason with passion like that of the unfortunate SMITH, is perfectly
useless; you may, with as much chance of success, reason and remonstrate
with the winds or the waves: if you make impression, it lasts but for a
moment: your effort, like an inadequate stoppage of waters, only adds, in
the end, to the violence of the torrent: the current must have and will have
its course, be the consequences what they may. In cases not quite so
decided, absence, the sight of new faces, the sound of new voices, generally
serve, if not as a radical cure, as a mitigation, at least, of the disease. But,
the worst of it is, that, on this point, we have the girls (and women too)
against us! For they look upon it as right that every lover should be a little
maddish; and, every attempt to rescue him from the thraldom imposed by
their charms, they look upon as an overt act of treason against their natural
sovereignty. No girl ever liked a young man less for his having done things
foolish and wild and ridiculous, provided she was sure that love of her had
been the cause: let her but be satisfied upon this score, and there are very
few things which she will not forgive. And, though wholly unconscious of
the fact, she is a great and sound philosopher after all. For, from the nature
of things, the rearing of a family always has been, is, and must ever be,

attended with cares and troubles, which must infallibly produce, at times,
feelings to be combated and overcome by nothing short of that ardent
affection which first brought the parties together. So that, talk as long as
Parson MALTHUS likes about 'moral restraint;' and report as long as the
Committees of Parliament please about preventing 'premature and
improvident marriages' amongst the labouring classes, the passion that they
would restrain, while it is necessary to the existence of mankind, is the
greatest of all the compensations for the inevitable cares, troubles,
hardships, and sorrows of life; and, as to the marriages, if they could once
be rendered universally provident, every generous sentiment would quickly
be banished from the world.
85. The other description of lovers, with whom it is useless to reason, are
those who love according to the rules of arithmetic, or who measure their
matrimonial expectations by the chain of the land-surveyor. These are not
love and marriage; they are bargain and sale. Young men will naturally, and
almost necessarily, fix their choice on young women in their own rank in
life; because from habit and intercourse they will know them best. But, if
the length of the girl's purse, present or contingent, be a consideration with
the man, or the length of his purse, present or contingent, be a consideration
with her, it is an affair of bargain and sale. I know that kings, princes, and
princesses are, in respect of marriage, restrained by the law: I know that
nobles, if not thus restrained by positive law, are restrained, in fact, by the
very nature of their order. And here is a disadvantage which, as far as real
enjoyment of life is concerned, more than counterbalances all the
advantages that they possess over the rest of the community. This
disadvantage, generally speaking, pursues rank and riches downwards, till
you approach very nearly to that numerous class who live by manual labour,
becoming, however, less and less as you descend. You generally find even
very vulgar rich men making a sacrifice of their natural and rational taste to
their mean and ridiculous pride, and thereby providing for themselves an
ample supply of misery for life. By preferring 'provident marriages' to
marriages of love, they think to secure themselves against all the evils of
poverty; but, if poverty come, and come it may, and frequently does, in spite
of the best laid plans, and best modes of conduct; if poverty come, then
where is the counterbalance for that ardent mutual affection, which troubles,
and losses, and crosses always increase rather than diminish, and which,

amidst all the calamities that can befall a man, whispers to his heart, that his
best possession is still left him unimpaired? The WORCESTERSHIRE
BARONET, who has had to endure the sneers of fools on account of his
marriage with a beautiful and virtuous servant maid, would, were the
present ruinous measures of the Government to drive him from his mansion
to a cottage, still have a source of happiness; while many of those, who
might fall in company with him, would, in addition to all their other
troubles, have, perhaps, to endure the reproaches of wives to whom poverty,
or even humble life, would be insupportable.
86. If marrying for the sake of money be, under any circumstances,
despicable, if not disgraceful; if it be, generally speaking, a species of legal
prostitution, only a little less shameful than that which, under some
governments, is openly licensed for the sake of a tax; if this be the case
generally, what ought to be said of a young man, who, in the heyday of
youth, should couple himself on to a libidinous woman, old enough,
perhaps, to be his grandmother, ugly as the nightmare, offensive alike to the
sight and the smell, and who should pretend to love her too: and all this
merely for the sake of her money? Why, it ought, and it, doubtless, would
be said of him, that his conduct was a libel on both man and womankind;
that his name ought, for ever, to be synonymous with baseness and
nastiness, and that in no age and in no nation, not marked by a general
depravity of manners, and total absence of all sense of shame, every
associate, male or female, of such a man, or of his filthy mate, would be
held in abhorrence. Public morality would drive such a hateful pair from
society, and strict justice would hunt them from the face of the earth.
87. BUONAPARTE could not be said to marry for money, but his motive
was little better. It was for dominion, for power, for ambition, and that, too,
of the most contemptible kind. I knew an American Gentleman, with whom
BUONAPARTE had always been a great favourite; but the moment the
news arrived of his divorce and second marriage, he gave him up. This
piece of grand prostitution was too much to be defended. And the truth is,
that BUONAPARTE might have dated his decline from the day of that
marriage. My American friend said, 'If I had been he, I would, in the first
place, have married the poorest and prettiest girl in all France.' If he had
done this, he would, in all probability, have now been on an imperial throne,
instead of being eaten by worms at the bottom of a very deep hole in Saint

Helena; whence, however, his bones convey to the world the moral, that to
marry for money, for ambition, or from any motive other than the one
pointed out by affection, is not the road to glory, to happiness, or to peace.
88. Let me now turn from these two descriptions of lovers, with whom it is
useless to reason, and address myself to you, my reader, whom I suppose to
be a real lover, but not so smitten as to be bereft of your reason. You should
never forget, that marriage, which is a state that every young person ought
to have in view, is a thing to last for life; and that, generally speaking, it is
to make life happy, or miserable; for, though a man may bring his mind to
something nearly a state of indifference, even that is misery, except with
those who can hardly be reckoned amongst sensitive beings. Marriage
brings numerous cares, which are amply compensated by the more
numerous delights which are their companions. But to have the delights, as
well as the cares, the choice of the partner must be fortunate. I say
fortunate; for, after all, love, real love, impassioned affection, is an
ingredient so absolutely necessary, that no perfect reliance can be placed on
the judgment. Yet, the judgment may do something; reason may have some
influence; and, therefore, I here offer you my advice with regard to the
exercise of that reason.
89. The things which you ought to desire in a wife are, 1. Chastity; 2.
sobriety; 3. industry; 4. frugality; 5. cleanliness; 6. knowledge of domestic
affairs; 7. good temper; 8. beauty.
90. I. CHASTITY, perfect modesty, in word, deed, and even thought, is so
essential, that, without it, no female is fit to be a wife. It is not enough that a
young woman abstain from everything approaching towards indecorum in
her behaviour towards men; it is, with me, not enough that she cast down
her eyes, or turn aside her head with a smile, when she hears an indelicate
allusion: she ought to appear not to understand it, and to receive from it no
more impression than if she were a post. A loose woman is a disagreeable
acquaintance: what must she be, then, as a wife? Love is so blind, and
vanity is so busy in persuading us that our own qualities will be sufficient to
ensure fidelity, that we are very apt to think nothing, or, at any rate, very
little, of trifling symptoms of levity; but if such symptoms show themselves
now, we may be well assured, that we shall never possess the power of
effecting a cure. If prudery mean false modesty, it is to be despised; but if it

mean modesty pushed to the utmost extent, I confess that I like it. Your 'free
and hearty' girls I have liked very well to talk and laugh with; but never, for
one moment, did it enter into my mind that I could have endured a 'free and
hearty' girl for a wife. The thing is, I repeat, to last for life; it is to be a
counterbalance for troubles and misfortunes; and it must, therefore, be
perfect, or it had better not be at all. To say that one despises jealousy is
foolish; it is a thing to be lamented; but the very elements of it ought to be
avoided. Gross indeed is the beast, for he is unworthy of the name of man;
nasty indeed is the wretch, who can even entertain the thought of putting
himself between a pair of sheets with a wife of whose infidelity he
possesses the proof; but, in such cases, a man ought to be very slow to
believe appearances; and he ought not to decide against his wife but upon
the clearest proof. The last, and, indeed, the only effectual safeguard is, to
begin well; to make a good choice; to let the beginning be such as to render
infidelity and jealousy next to impossible. If you begin in grossness; if you
couple yourself on to one with whom you have taken liberties, infidelity is
the natural and just consequence. When a Peer of the realm, who had not
been over-fortunate in his matrimonial affairs, was urging MAJOR
CARTWRIGHT to seek for nothing more than 'moderate reform,' the Major
(forgetting the domestic circumstances of his Lordship) asked him how he
should relish 'moderate chastity' in a wife! The bare use of the two words,
thus coupled together, is sufficient to excite disgust. Yet with this 'moderate
chastity' you must be, and ought to be, content, if you have entered into
marriage with one, in whom you have ever discovered the slightest
approach towards lewdness, either in deeds, words, or looks. To marry has
been your own act; you have made the contract for your own gratification;
you knew the character of the other party; and the children, if any, or the
community, are not to be the sufferers for your gross and corrupt passion.
'Moderate chastity' is all that you have, in fact, contracted for: you have it,
and you have no reason to complain. When I come to address myself to the
husband, I shall have to say more upon this subject, which I dismiss for the
present with observing, that my observation has convinced me, that, when
families are rendered unhappy from the existence of 'moderate chastity,' the
fault, first or last, has been in the man, ninety-nine times out of every
hundred.

91. SOBRIETY. By sobriety I do not mean merely an absence of drinking
to a state of intoxication; for, if that be hateful in a man, what must it be in a
woman! There is a Latin proverb, which says, that wine, that is to say,
intoxication, brings forth truth. Whatever it may do in this way, in men, in
women it is sure, unless prevented by age or by salutary ugliness, to
produce a moderate, and a very moderate, portion of chastity. There never
was a drunken woman, a woman who loved strong drink, who was chaste,
if the opportunity of being the contrary presented itself to her. There are
cases where health requires wine, and even small portions of more ardent
liquor; but (reserving what I have further to say on this point, till I come to
the conduct of the husband) young unmarried women can seldom stand in
need of these stimulants; and, at any rate, only in cases of well-known
definite ailments. Wine! 'only a glass or two of wine at dinner, or so'! As
soon as have married a girl whom I had thought liable to be persuaded to
drink, habitually, 'only a glass or two of wine at dinner, or so;' as soon as
have married such a girl, I would have taken a strumpet from the streets.
And it has not required age to give me this way of thinking: it has always
been rooted in my mind from the moment that I began to think the girls
prettier than posts. There are few things so disgusting as a guzzling woman.
A gormandizing one is bad enough; but, one who tips off the liquor with an
appetite, and exclaims 'good! good!' by a smack of her lips, is fit for nothing
but a brothel. There may be cases, amongst the hard-labouring women,
such as reapers, for instance, especially when they have children at the
breast; there may be cases, where very hard-working women may stand in
need of a little good beer; beer, which, if taken in immoderate quantities,
would produce intoxication. But, while I only allow the possibility of the
existence of such cases, I deny the necessity of any strong drink at all in
every other case. Yet, in this metropolis, it is the general custom for
tradesmen, journeymen, and even labourers, to have regularly on their
tables the big brewers' poison, twice in every day, and at the rate of not less
than a pot to a person, women, as well as men, as the allowance for the day.
A pot of poison a day, at fivepence the pot, amounts to seven pounds and
two shillings in the year! Man and wife suck down, in this way, fourteen
pounds four shillings a year! Is it any wonder that they are clad in rags, that
they are skin and bone, and that their children are covered with filth?

92. But by the word SOBRIETY, in a young woman, I mean a great deal
more than even a rigid abstinence from that love of drink, which I am not to
suppose, and which I do not believe, to exist any thing like generally
amongst the young women of this country. I mean a great deal more than
this; I mean sobriety of conduct. The word sober, and its derivatives, do not
confine themselves to matters of drink: they express steadiness,
seriousness, carefulness, scrupulous propriety of conduct; and they are thus
used amongst country people in many parts of England. When a
Somersetshire fellow makes too free with a girl, she reproves him with,
'Come! be sober!' And when we wish a team, or any thing, to be moved on
steadily and with great care, we cry out to the carter, or other operator,
'Soberly, soberly.' Now, this species of sobriety is a great qualification in the
person you mean to make your wife. Skipping, capering, romping, rattling
girls are very amusing where all costs and other consequences are out of the
question; and they may become sober in the Somersetshire sense of the
word. But while you have no certainty of this, you have a presumptive
argument on the other side. To be sure, when girls are mere children, they
are to play and romp like children. But, when they arrive at that age which
turns their thoughts towards that sort of connexion which is to be theirs for
life; when they begin to think of having the command of a house, however
small or poor, it is time for them to cast away the levity of the child. It is
natural, nor is it very wrong, that I know of, for children to like to gad about
and to see all sorts of strange sights, though I do not approve of this even in
children: but, if I could not have found a young woman (and I am sure I
never should have married an old one) who I was not sure possessed all the
qualities expressed by the word sobriety, I should have remained a bachelor
to the end of that life, which, in that case, would, I am satisfied, have
terminated without my having performed a thousandth part of those labours
which have been, and are, in spite of all political prejudice, the wonder of
all who have seen, or heard of, them. Scores of gentlemen have, at different
times, expressed to me their surprise, that I was 'always in spirits;' that
nothing pulled me down; and the truth is, that, throughout nearly forty years
of troubles, losses, and crosses, assailed all the while by more numerous
and powerful enemies than ever man had before to contend with, and
performing, at the same time, labours greater than man ever before
performed; all those labours requiring mental exertion, and some of them
mental exertion of the highest order; the truth is, that, throughout the whole

of this long time of troubles and of labours, I have never known a single
hour of real anxiety; the troubles have been no troubles to me; I have not
known what lowness of spirits meaned; have been more gay, and felt less
care, than any bachelor that ever lived. 'You are always in spirits, Cobbett!'
To be sure; for why should I not? Poverty I have always set at defiance, and
I could, therefore, defy the temptations of riches; and, as to home and
children, I had taken care to provide myself with an inexhaustible store of
that 'sobriety,' which I am so strongly recommending my reader to provide
himself with; or, if he cannot do that, to deliberate long before he ventures
on the life-enduring matrimonial voyage. This sobriety is a title to trust-
worthiness; and this, young man, is the treasure that you ought to prize far
above all others. Miserable is the husband, who, when he crosses the
threshold of his house, carries with him doubts and fears and suspicions. I
do not mean suspicions of the fidelity of his wife, but of her care, frugality,
attention to his interests, and to the health and morals of his children.
Miserable is the man, who cannot leave all unlocked, and who is not sure,
quite certain, that all is as safe as if grasped in his own hand. He is the
happy husband, who can go away, at a moment's warning, leaving his house
and his family with as little anxiety as he quits an inn, not more fearing to
find, on his return, any thing wrong, than he would fear a discontinuance of
the rising and setting of the sun, and if, as in my case, leaving books and
papers all lying about at sixes and sevens, finding them arranged in proper
order, and the room, during the lucky interval, freed from the effects of his
and his ploughman's or gardener's dirty shoes. Such a man has no real
cares; such a man has no troubles; and this is the sort of life that I have led.
I have had all the numerous and indescribable delights of home and
children, and, at the same time, all the bachelor's freedom from domestic
cares: and to this cause, far more than to any other, my readers owe those
labours, which I never could have performed, if even the slightest degree of
want of confidence at home had ever once entered into my mind.
93. But, in order to possess this precious trust-worthiness, you must, if you
can, exercise your reason in the choice of your partner. If she be vain of her
person, very fond of dress, fond of flattery, at all given to gadding about,
fond of what are called parties of pleasure, or coquetish, though in the least
degree; if either of these, she never will be trust-worthy; worthy; she cannot
change her nature; and if you marry her, you will be unjust if you expect

trust-worthiness at her hands. But, besides this, even if you find in her that
innate 'sobriety' of which I have been speaking, there requires on your part,
and that at once too, confidence and trust without any limit. Confidence is,
in this case, nothing unless it be reciprocal. To have a trust-worthy wife,
you must begin by showing her, even before you are married, that you have
no suspicions, no fears, no doubts, with regard to her. Many a man has been
discarded by a virtuous girl, merely on account of his querulous conduct.
All women despise jealous men; and, if they marry such their motive is
other than that of affection. Therefore, begin by proofs of unlimited
confidence; and, as example may serve to assist precept, and as I never have
preached that which I have not practised, I will give you the history of my
own conduct in this respect.
94. When I first saw my wife, she was thirteen years old, and I was within
about a month of twenty-one. She was the daughter of a Serjeant of artillery,
and I was the Serjeant-Major of a regiment of foot, both stationed in forts
near the city of St. John, in the Province of New-Brunswick. I sat in the
same room with her, for about an hour, in company with others, and I made
up my mind that she was the very girl for me. That I thought her beautiful is
certain, for that I had always said should be an indispensable qualification;
but I saw in her what I deemed marks of that sobriety of conduct of which I
have said so much, and which has been by far the greatest blessing of my
life. It was now dead of winter, and, of course, the snow several feet deep
on the ground, and the weather piercing cold. It was my habit, when I had
done my morning's writing, to go out at break of day to take a walk on a hill
at the foot of which our barracks lay. In about three mornings after I had
first seen her, I had, by an invitation to breakfast with me, got up two young
men to join me in my walk; and our road lay by the house of her father and
mother. It was hardly light, but she was out on the snow, scrubbing out a
washing-tub. 'That's the girl for me,' said I, when we had got out of her
hearing. One of these young men came to England soon afterwards; and he,
who keeps an inn in Yorkshire, came over to Preston, at the time of the
election, to verify whether I were the same man. When he found that I was,
he appeared surprised; but what was his surprise, when I told him that those
tall young men, whom he saw around me, were the sons of that pretty little
girl that he and I saw scrubbing out the washing-tub on the snow in New-
Brunswick at day-break in the morning!

95. From the day that I first spoke to her, I never had a thought of her ever
being the wife of any other man, more than I had a thought of her being
transformed into a chest of drawers; and I formed my resolution at once, to
marry her as soon as we could get permission, and to get out of the army as
soon as I could. So that this matter was, at once, settled as firmly as if
written in the book of fate. At the end of about six months, my regiment,
and I along with it, were removed to FREDERICKTON, a distance of a
hundred miles, up the river of ST. JOHN; and, which was worse, the
artillery were expected to go off to England a year or two before our
regiment! The artillery went, and she along with them; and now it was that I
acted a part becoming a real and sensible lover. I was aware, that, when she
got to that gay place WOOLWICH, the house of her father and mother,
necessarily visited by numerous persons not the most select, might become
unpleasant to her, and I did not like, besides, that she should continue to
work hard. I had saved a hundred and fifty guineas, the earnings of my early
hours, in writing for the paymaster, the quartermaster, and others, in
addition to the savings of my own pay. I sent her all my money, before she
sailed; and wrote to her to beg of her, if she found her home uncomfortable,
to hire a lodging with respectable people: and, at any rate, not to spare the
money, by any means, but to buy herself good clothes, and to live without
hard work, until I arrived in England; and I, in order to induce her to lay out
the money, told her that I should get plenty more before I came home.
96. As the malignity of the devil would have it, we were kept abroad two
years longer than our time, Mr. PITT (England not being so tame then as
she is now) having knocked up a dust with Spain about Nootka Sound. Oh,
how I cursed Nootka Sound, and poor bawling Pitt too, I am afraid! At the
end of four years, however, home I came; landed at Portsmouth, and got my
discharge from the army by the great kindness of poor LORD EDWARD
FITZGERALD, who was then the Major of my regiment. I found my little
girl a servant of all work (and hard work it was), at five pounds a year, in
the house of a CAPTAIN BRISAC; and, without hardly saying a word
about the matter, she put into my hands the whole of my hundred and fifty
guineas unbroken!
97. Need I tell the reader what my feelings were? Need I tell kind-hearted
English parents what effect this anecdote must have produced on the minds
of our children? Need I attempt to describe what effect this example ought

to have on every young woman who shall do me the honour to read this
book? Admiration of her conduct, and self-gratulation on this indubitable
proof of the soundness of my own judgment, were now added to my love of
her beautiful person.
98. Now, I do not say that there are not many young women of this country
who would, under similar circumstances, have acted as my wife did in this
case; on the contrary, I hope, and do sincerely believe, that there are. But
when her age is considered; when we reflect, that she was living in a place
crowded, literally crowded, with gaily-dressed and handsome young men,
many of whom really far richer and in higher rank than I was, and scores of
them ready to offer her their hand; when we reflect that she was living
amongst young women who put upon their backs every shilling that they
could come at; when we see her keeping the bag of gold untouched, and
working hard to provide herself with but mere necessary apparel, and doing
this while she was passing from fourteen to eighteen years of age; when we
view the whole of the circumstances, we must say that here is an example,
which, while it reflects honour on her sex, ought to have weight with every
young woman whose eyes or ears this relation shall reach.
99. If any young man imagine, that this great sobriety of conduct in young
women must be accompanied with seriousness approaching to gloom, he is,
according to my experience and observation, very much deceived. The
contrary is the fact; for I have found that as, amongst men, your jovial
companions are, except over the bottle, the dullest and most insipid of
souls; so amongst women, the gay, rattling, and laughing, are, unless some
party of pleasure, or something out of domestic life, is going on, generally
in the dumps and blue-devils. Some stimulus is always craved after by this
description of women; some sight to be seen, something to see or hear other
than what is to be found at home, which, as it affords no incitement, nothing
'to raise and keep up the spirits', is looked upon merely as a place to be at
for want of a better; merely a place for eating and drinking, and the like;
merely a biding place, whence to sally in search of enjoyments. A greater
curse than a wife of this description, it would be somewhat difficult to find;
and, in your character of Lover, you are to provide against it. I hate a dull,
melancholy, moping thing: I could not have existed in the same house with
such a thing for a single month. The mopers are, too, all giggle at other
times: the gaiety is for others, and the moping for the husband, to comfort

him, happy man, when he is alone: plenty of smiles and of badinage for
others, and for him to participate with others; but the moping is reserved
exclusively for him. One hour she is capering about, as if rehearsing a jig;
and, the next, sighing to the motion of a lazy needle, or weeping over a
novel and this is called sentiment! Music, indeed! Give me a mother singing
to her clean and fat and rosy baby, and making the house ring with her
extravagant and hyperbolical encomiums on it. That is the music which is
'the food of love;' and not the formal, pedantic noises, an affectation of skill
in which is now-a-days the ruin of half the young couples in the middle
rank of life. Let any man observe, as I so frequently have, with delight, the
excessive fondness of the labouring people for their children. Let him
observe with what pride they dress them out on a Sunday, with means
deducted from their own scanty meals. Let him observe the husband, who
has toiled all the week like a horse, nursing the baby, while the wife is
preparing the bit of dinner. Let him observe them both abstaining from a
sufficiency, lest the children should feel the pinchings of hunger. Let him
observe, in short, the whole of their demeanour, the real mutual affection,
evinced, not in words, but in unequivocal deeds. Let him observe these
things, and, having then cast a look at the lives of the great and wealthy, he
will say, with me, that, when a man is choosing his partner for life, the
dread of poverty ought to be cast to the winds. A labourer's cottage, on a
Sunday; the husband or wife having a baby in arms, looking at two or three
older ones playing between the flower-borders going from the wicket to the
door, is, according to my taste, the most interesting object that eyes ever
beheld; and, it is an object to be beheld in no country upon earth but
England. In France, a labourer's cottage means a shed with a dung-heap
before the door; and it means much about the same in America, where it is
wholly inexcusable. In riding once, about five years ago, from Petworth to
Horsham, on a Sunday in the afternoon, I came to a solitary cottage which
stood at about twenty yards distance from the road. There was the wife with
the baby in her arms, the husband teaching another child to walk, while four
more were at play before them. I stopped and looked at them for some time,
and then, turning my horse, rode up to the wicket, getting into talk by
asking the distance to Horsham. I found that the man worked chiefly in the
woods, and that he was doing pretty well. The wife was then only twenty-
two, and the man only twenty-five. She was a pretty woman, even for
Sussex, which, not excepting Lancashire, contains the prettiest women in

England. He was a very fine and stout young man. 'Why,' said I, 'how many
children do you reckon to have at last?' 'I do not care how many,' said the
man: 'God never sends mouths without sending meat.' 'Did you ever hear,'
said I, 'of one PARSON MALTHUS?' 'No, sir.' 'Why, if he were to hear of
your works, he would be outrageous; for he wants an act of parliament to
prevent poor people from marrying young, and from having such lots of
children.' 'Oh! the brute!' exclaimed the wife; while the husband laughed,
thinking that I was joking. I asked the man whether he had ever had relief
from the parish; and upon his answering in the negative, I took out my
purse, took from it enough to bait my horse at Horsham, and to clear my
turnpikes to WORTH, whither I was going in order to stay awhile, and gave
him all the rest. Now, is it not a shame, is it not a sin of all sins, that people
like these should, by acts of the government, be reduced to such misery as
to be induced to abandon their homes and their country, to seek, in a foreign
land, the means of preventing themselves and their children from starving?
And this has been, and now is, actually the case with many such families in
this same county of Sussex!
100. An ardent-minded young man (who, by-the-by, will, as I am afraid,
have been wearied by this rambling digression) may fear, that this great
sobriety of conduct in a young woman, for which I have been so
strenuously contending, argues a want of that warmth, which he naturally so
much desires; and, if my observation and experience warranted the
entertaining of this fear, I should say, had I to live my life over again, give
me the warmth, and I will stand my chance as to the rest. But, this
observation and this experience tell me the contrary; they tell me that levity
is, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, the companion of a want of ardent
feeling. Prostitutes never love, and, for the far greater part, never did. Their
passion, which is more mere animal than any thing else, is easily gratified;
they, like rakes, change not only without pain, but with pleasure; that is to
say, pleasure as great as they can enjoy. Women of light minds have seldom
any ardent passion; love is a mere name, unless confined to one object; and
young women, in whom levity of conduct is observable, will not be thus
restricted. I do not, however, recommend a young man to be too severe in
judging, where the conduct does not go beyond mere levity, and is not
bordering on loose conduct; for something depends here upon constitution
and animal spirits, and something also upon the manners of the country.

That levity, which, in a French girl, I should not have thought a great deal
of, would have frightened me away from an English or an American girl.
When I was in France, just after I was married, there happened to be
amongst our acquaintance a gay, sprightly girl, of about seventeen. I was
remonstrating with her, one day, on the facility with which she seemed to
shift her smiles from object to object; and she, stretching one arm out in an
upward direction, the other in a downward direction, raising herself upon
one foot, leaning her body on one side, and thus throwing herself into flying
attitude, answered my grave lecture by singing, in a very sweet voice
(significantly bowing her head and smiling at the same time), the following
lines from the vaudeville, in the play of Figaro:

Si l'amour a des ailles;
N'est ce pas pour voltiger?

That is, if love has wings, is it not to flutter about with? The wit, argument,
and manner, all together, silenced me. She, after I left France, married a
very worthy man, has had a large family, and has been, and is, a most
excellent wife and mother. But that which does sometimes well in France,
does not do here at all. Our manners are more grave: steadiness is the rule,
and levity the exception. Love may voltige in France; but, in England, it
cannot, with safety to the lover: and it is a truth which, I believe, no man of
attentive observation will deny, that, as, in general, English wives are more
warm in their conjugal attachments than those of France, so, with regard to
individuals, that those English women who are the most light in their
manners, and who are the least constant in their attachments, have the
smallest portion of that warmth, that indescribable passion which God has
given to human beings as the great counterbalance to all the sorrows and
sufferings of life.
101. INDUSTRY. By industry, I do not mean merely laboriousness, merely
labour or activity of body, for purposes of gain or of saving; for there may
be industry amongst those who have more money than they know well what
to do with: and there may be lazy ladies, as well as lazy farmers' and
tradesmen's wives. There is no state of life in which industry in the wife is
not necessary to the happiness and prosperity of the family, at the head of
the household affairs of which she is placed. If she be lazy, there will be
lazy servants, and, which is a great deal worse, children habitually lazy:
every thing, however necessary to be done, will be put off to the last
moment: then it will be done badly, and, in many cases, not at all: the
dinner will be too late; the journey or the visit will be tardy;
inconveniencies of all sorts will be continually arising: there will always be
a heavy arrear of things unperformed; and this, even amongst the most
wealthy of all, is a great curse; for, if they have no business imposed upon
them by necessity, they make business for themselves; life would be
unbearable without it: and therefore a lazy woman must always be a curse,
be her rank or station what it may.

102. But, who is to tell whether a girl will make an industrious woman?
How is the purblind lover especially, to be able to ascertain whether she,
whose smiles and dimples and bewitching lips have half bereft him of his
senses; how is he to be able to judge, from any thing that he can see,
whether the beloved object will be industrious or lazy? Why, it is very
difficult: it is a matter that reason has very little to do with; but there are,
nevertheless, certain outward and visible signs, from which a man, not
wholly deprived of the use of his reason, may form a pretty accurate
judgment as to this matter. It was a story in Philadelphia, some years ago,
that a young man, who was courting one of three sisters, happened to be on
a visit to her, when all the three were present, and when one said to the
others, 'I wonder where our needle is.' Upon which he withdrew, as soon as
was consistent with the rules of politeness, resolved never to think more of
a girl who possessed a needle only in partnership, and who, it appeared, was
not too well informed as to the place where even that share was deposited.
103. This was, to be sure, a very flagrant instance of a want of industry; for,
if the third part of the use of a needle satisfied her when single, it was
reasonable to anticipate that marriage would banish that useful implement
altogether. But such instances are seldom suffered to come in contact with
the eyes and ears of the lover, to disguise all defects from whom is the great
business, not only of the girl herself, but of her whole family. There are,
however, certain outward signs, which, if attended to with care, will serve
as pretty sure guides. And, first, if you find the tongue lazy, you may be
nearly certain that the hands and feet are the same. By laziness of the
tongue I do not mean silence; I do not mean an absence of talk, for that is,
in most cases, very good; but, I mean, a slow and soft utterance; a sort of
sighing out of the words instead of speaking them; a sort of letting the
sounds fall out, as if the party were sick at stomach. The pronunciation of
an industrious person is generally quick, distinct, and the voice, if not
strong, firm at the least. Not masculine; as feminine as possible; not a croak
nor a bawl, but a quick, distinct, and sound voice. Nothing is much more
disgusting than what the sensible country people call a maw-mouthed
woman. A maw-mouthed man is bad enough: he is sure to be a lazy fellow:
but, a woman of this description, in addition to her laziness, soon becomes
the most disgusting of mates. In this whole world nothing is much more
hateful than a female's under jaw, lazily moving up and down, and letting

out a long string of half-articulate sounds. It is impossible for any man, who
has any spirit in him, to love such a woman for any length of time.
104. Look a little, also, at the labours of the teeth, for these correspond with
those of the other members of the body, and with the operations of the
mind. 'Quick at meals, quick at work,' is a saying as old as the hills, in this,
the most industrious nation upon earth; and never was there a truer saying.
But fashion comes in here, and decides that you shall not be quick at meals;
that you shall sit and be carrying on the affair of eating for an hour, or more.
Good God! what have I not suffered on this account! However, though she
must sit as long as the rest, and though she must join in the performance
(for it is a real performance) unto the end of the last scene, she cannot make
her teeth abandon their character. She may, and must, suffer the slice to
linger on the plate, and must make the supply slow, in order to fill up the
time; but when she does bite, she cannot well disguise what nature has
taught her to do; and you may be assured, that if her jaws move in slow
time, and if she rather squeeze than bite the food; if she so deal with it as to
leave you in doubt as to whether she mean finally to admit or reject it; if she
deal with it thus, set her down as being, in her very nature, incorrigibly lazy.
Never mind the pieces of needle-work, the tambouring, the maps of the
world made by her needle. Get to see her at work upon a mutton chop, or a
bit of bread and cheese; and, if she deal quickly with these, you have a
pretty good security for that activity, that stirring industry, without which a
wife is a burden instead of being a help. And, as to love, it cannot live for
more than a month or two (in the breast of a man of spirit) towards a lazy
woman.
105. Another mark of industry is, a quick step, and a somewhat heavy tread,
showing that the foot comes down with a hearty good will; and if the body
lean a little forward, and the eyes keep steadily in the same direction, while
the feet are going, so much the better, for these discover earnestness to
arrive at the intended point. I do not like, and I never liked, your sauntering,
soft-stepping girls, who move as if they were perfectly indifferent as to the
result; and, as to the love part of the story, whoever expects ardent and
lasting affection from one of these sauntering girls, will, when too late, find
his mistake: the character runs the same all the way through; and no man
ever yet saw a sauntering girl, who did not, when married, make a mawkish
wife, and a cold-hearted mother; cared very little for either by husband or

children; and, of course, having no store of those blessings which are the
natural resources to apply to in sickness and in old age.
106. Early-rising is another mark of industry; and though, in the higher
situations of life, it may be of no importance in a mere pecuniary point of
view, it is, even there, of importance in other respects; for it is, I should
imagine, pretty difficult to keep love alive towards a woman who never sees
the dew, never beholds the rising sun, and who constantly comes directly
from a reeking bed to the breakfast table, and there chews about, without
appetite, the choicest morsels of human food. A man might, perhaps, endure
this for a month or two, without being disgusted; but that is ample
allowance of time. And, as to people in the middle rank of life, where a
living and a provision for children is to be sought by labour of some sort or
other, late rising in the wife is certain ruin; and, never was there yet an
early-rising wife, who had been a late-rising girl. If brought up to late
rising, she will like it; it will be her habit; she will, when married, never
want excuses for indulging in the habit; at first she will be indulged without
bounds; to make a change afterwards will be difficult; it will be deemed a
wrong done to her; she will ascribe it to diminished affection; a quarrel
must ensue, or, the husband must submit to be ruined, or, at the very least,
to see half the fruit of his labour snored and lounged away. And, is this
being rigid? Is it being harsh; is it being hard upon women? Is it the
offspring of the frigid severity of age? It is none of these: it arises from an
ardent desire to promote the happiness, and to add to the natural, legitimate,
and salutary influence, of the female sex. The tendency of this advice is to
promote the preservation of their health; to prolong the duration of their
beauty; to cause them to be beloved to the last day of their lives; and to give
them, during the whole of those lives, weight and consequence, of which
laziness would render them wholly unworthy.
107. FRUGALITY. This means the contrary of extravagance. It does not
mean stinginess; it does not mean a pinching of the belly, nor a stripping of
the back; but it means an abstaining from all unnecessary expenditure, and
all unnecessary use, of goods of any and of every sort; and a quality of
great importance it is, whether the rank in life be high or low. Some people
are, indeed, so rich, they have such an overabundance of money and goods,
that how to get rid of them would, to a looker-on, seem to be their only
difficulty. But while the inconvenience of even these immense masses is not

too great to be overcome by a really extravagant woman, who jumps with
joy at a basket of strawberries at a guinea an ounce, and who would not
give a straw for green peas later in the year than January; while such a dame
would lighten the bags of a loan-monger, or shorten the rent-roll of half-a-
dozen peerages amalgamated into one possession, she would, with very
little study and application of her talent, send a nobleman of ordinary estate
to the poor-house or the pension list, which last may be justly regarded as
the poor-book of the aristocracy. How many noblemen and gentlemen, of
fine estates, have been ruined and degraded by the extravagance of their
wives! More frequently by their own extravagance, perhaps; but, in
numerous instances, by that of those whose duty it is to assist in upholding
their stations by husbanding their fortunes.
108. If this be the case amongst the opulent, who have estates to draw upon,
what must be the consequences of a want of frugality in the middle and
lower ranks of life? Here it must be fatal, and especially amongst that
description of persons whose wives have, in many cases, the receiving as
well as the expending of money. In such a case, there wants nothing but
extravagance in the wife to make ruin as sure as the arrival of old age. To
obtain security against this is very difficult; yet, if the lover be not quite
blind, he may easily discover a propensity towards extravagance. The object
of his addresses will, nine times out of ten, not be the manager of a house;
but she must have her dress, and other little matters under her control. If she
be costly in these; if, in these, she step above her rank, or even to the top of
it; if she purchase all she is able to purchase, and prefer the showy to the
useful, the gay and the fragile to the less sightly and more durable, he may
be sure that the disposition will cling to her through life. If he perceive in
her a taste for costly food, costly furniture, costly amusements; if he find
her love of gratification to be bounded only by her want of means; if he find
her full of admiration of the trappings of the rich, and of desire to be able to
imitate them, he may be pretty sure that she will not spare his purse, when
once she gets her hand into it; and, therefore, if he can bid adieu to her
charms, the sooner he does it the better.
109. The outward and visible and vulgar signs of extravagance are rings,
broaches, bracelets, buckles, necklaces, diamonds (real or mock), and, in
short, all the hard-ware which women put upon their persons. These things
may be proper enough in palaces, or in scenes resembling palaces; but,

when they make their appearance amongst people in the middle rank of life,
where, after all, they only serve to show that poverty in the parties which
they wish to disguise; when the nasty, mean, tawdry things make their
appearance in this rank of life, they are the sure indications of a disposition
that will always be straining at what it can never attain. To marry a girl of
this disposition is really self-destruction. You never can have either property
or peace. Earn her a horse to ride, she will want a gig: earn the gig, she will
want a chariot: get her that, she will long for a coach and four: and, from
stage to stage, she will torment you to the end of her or your days; for, still
there will be somebody with a finer equipage than you can give her; and, as
long as this is the case, you will never have rest. Reason would tell her, that
she could never be at the top; that she must stop at some point short of that;
and that, therefore, all expenses in the rivalship are so much thrown away.
But, reason and broaches and bracelets do not go in company: the girl who
has not the sense to perceive that her person is disfigured, and not
beautified, by parcels of brass and tin (for they are generally little better)
and other hard-ware, stuck about her body; the girl that is so foolish as not
to perceive, that, when silks and cottons and cambrics, in their neatest form,
have done their best, nothing more is to be done; the girl that cannot
perceive this is too great a fool to be trusted with the purse of any man.
110. CLEANLINESS. This is a capital ingredient; for there never yet was,
and there never will be, love of long duration, sincere and ardent love, in
any man, towards a 'filthy mate.' I mean any man in England, or in those
parts of America where the people have descended from the English. I do
not say, that there are not men enough, even in England, to live peaceably
and even contentedly, with dirty, sluttish women; for, there are some who
seem to like the filth well enough. But what I contend for is this: that there
never can exist, for any length of time, ardent affection in any man towards
a woman who is filthy either in her person, or in her house affairs. Men may
be careless as to their own persons; they may, from the nature of their
business, or from their want of time to adhere to neatness in dress, be
slovenly in their own dress and habits; but, they do not relish this in their
wives, who must still have charms; and charms and filth do not go together.
111. It is not dress that the husband wants to be perpetual: it is not finery;
but cleanliness in every thing. The French women dress enough, especially
when they sally forth. My excellent neighbour, Mr. JOHN TREDWELL, of

Long Island, used to say, that the French were 'pigs in the parlour, and
peacocks on the promenade;' an alliteration which 'CANNING'S SELF'
might have envied! This occasional cleanliness is not the thing that an
English or an American husband wants: he wants it always; indoors as well
as out; by night as well as by day; on the floor as well as on the table; and,
however he may grumble about the 'fuss' and the 'expense' of it, he would
grumble more if he had it not. I once saw a picture representing the
amusements of Portuguese Lovers; that is to say, three or four young men,
dressed in gold or silver laced clothes, each having a young girl, dressed
like a princess, and affectionately engaged in hunting down and killing the
vermin in his head! This was, perhaps, an exaggeration; but that it should
have had the shadow of foundation, was enough to fill me with contempt
for the whole nation.
112. The signs of cleanliness are, in the first place, a clean skin. An English
girl will hardly let her lover see the stale dirt between her fingers, as I have
many times seen it between those of French women, and even ladies, of all
ages. An English girl will have her face clean, to be sure, if there be soap
and water within her reach; but, get a glance, just a glance, at her poll, if
you have any doubt upon the subject; and, if you find there, or behind the
ears, what the Yorkshire people call grime, the sooner you cease your visits
the better. I hope, now, that no young woman will be offended at this, and
think me too severe on her sex. I am only saying, I am only telling the
women, that which all men think; and, it is a decided advantage to them to
be fully informed of our thoughts on the subject. If any one, who shall read
this, find, upon self-examination, that she is defective in this respect, there
is plenty of time for correcting the defect.
113. In the dress you can, amongst rich people, find little whereon to form a
judgment as to cleanliness, because they have not only the dress prepared
for them, but put upon them into the bargain. But, in the middle rank of life,
the dress is a good criterion in two respects: first, as to its colour; for, if the
white be a sort of yellow, cleanly hands would have been at work to prevent
that. A white-yellow cravat, or shirt, on a man, speaks, at once, the character
of his wife; and, be you assured, that she will not take with your dress pains
which she has never taken with her own. Then, the manner of putting on the
dress is no bad foundation for judging. If it be careless, slovenly, if it do not
fit properly, no matter for its mean quality: mean as it may be, it may be

neatly and trimly put on; and, if it be not, take care of yourself; for, as you
will soon find to your cost, a sloven in one thing is a sloven in all things.
The country-people judge greatly from the state of the covering of the
ancles and, if that be not clean and tight, they conclude, that all out of sight
is not what it ought to be. Look at the shoes! If they be trodden on one side,
loose on the foot, or run down at the heel, it is a very bad sign; and, as to
slip-shod, though at coming down in the morning and even before day-light,
make up your mind to a rope, rather than to live with a slip-shod wife.
114. Oh! how much do women lose by inattention to these matters! Men, in
general, say nothing about it to their wives; but they think about it; they
envy their luckier neighbours; and in numerous cases, consequences the
most serious arise from this apparently trifling cause. Beauty is valuable; it
is one of the ties, and a strong tie too; that, however, cannot last to old age;
but, the charm of cleanliness never ends but with life itself. I dismiss this
part of my subject with a quotation from my 'YEAR'S RESIDENCE IN
AMERICA,' containing words which I venture to recommend to every
young woman to engrave on her heart: 'The sweetest flowers, when they
become putrid, stink the most; and a nasty woman is the nastiest thing in
nature.'
115. KNOWLEDGE OF DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. Without more or less of
this knowledge, a lady, even the wife of a peer, is but a poorish thing. It was
the fashion, in former times, for ladies to understand a great deal about
these affairs, and it would be very hard to make me believe that this did not
tend to promote the interests and honour of their husbands. The affairs of a
great family never can be well managed, if left wholly to hirelings; and
there are many parts of these affairs in which it would be unseemly for the
husband to meddle. Surely, no lady can be too high in rank to make it
proper for her to be well acquainted with the characters and general
demeanour of all the female servants. To receive and give them characters
is too much to be left to a servant, however good, and of service however
long. Much of the ease and happiness of the great and rich must depend on
the character of those by whom they are served: they live under the same
roof with them; they are frequently the children of their tenants, or poorer
neighbours; the conduct of their whole lives must be influenced by the
examples and precepts which they here imbibe; and when ladies consider
how much more weight there must be in one word from them than in ten

thousand words from a person who, call her what you like, is still a fellow-
servant, it does appear strange that they should forego the performance of
this at once important and pleasing part of their duty. It was from the
mansions of noblemen and gentlemen, and not from boarding-schools, that
farmers and tradesmen formerly took their wives; and though these days are
gone, with little chance of returning, there is still something left for ladies to
do in checking that torrent of immorality which is now crowding the streets
with prostitutes and cramming the jails with thieves.
116. I am, however, addressing myself, in this work, to persons in the
middle rank of life; and here a knowledge of domestic affairs is so necessary
in every wife, that the lover ought to have it continually in his eye. Not only
a knowledge of these affairs; not only to know how things ought to be done,
but how to do them; not only to know what ingredients ought to be put into
a pie or a pudding, but to be able to make the pie or the pudding. Young
people, when they come together, ought not, unless they have fortunes, or
are in a great way of business, to think about servants! Servants for what!
To help them to eat and drink and sleep? When children come, there must
be some help in a farmer's or tradesman's house; but until then, what call for
a servant in a house, the master of which has to earn every mouthful that is
consumed?
117. I shall, when I come to address myself to the husband, have much
more to say upon this subject of keeping servants; but, what the lover, if he
be not quite blind, has to look to, is, that his intended wife know how to do
the work of a house, unless he have fortune sufficient to keep her like a
lady. 'Eating and drinking,' as I observe in COTTAGE ECONOMY, came
three times every day; they must come; and, however little we may, in the
days of our health and vigour, care about choice food and about cookery, we
very soon get tired of heavy or burnt bread and of spoiled joints of meat: we
bear them for a time, or for two, perhaps; but, about the third time, we
lament inwardly; about the fifth time, it must be an extraordinary honey-
moon that will keep us from complaining: if the like continue for a month
or two, we begin to repent, and then adieu to all our anticipated delights.
We discover, when it is too late, that we have not got a help-mate, but a
burden; and, the fire of love being damped, the unfortunately educated
creature, whose parents are more to blame than she is, is, unless she resolve
to learn her duty, doomed to lead a life very nearly approaching to that of

misery; for, however considerate the husband, he never can esteem her as
he would have done, had she been skilled and able in domestic affairs.
118. The mere manual performance of domestic labours is not, indeed,
absolutely necessary in the female head of the family of professional men,
such as lawyers, doctors, and parsons; but, even here, and also in the case of
great merchants and of gentlemen living on their fortunes, surely the head
of the household ought to be able to give directions as to the purchasing of
meat, salting meat, making bread, making preserves of all sorts, and ought
to see the things done, or that they be done. She ought to take care that food
be well cooked, drink properly prepared and kept; that there be always a
sufficient supply; that there be good living without waste; and that, in her
department, nothing shall be seen inconsistent with the rank, station, and
character of her husband, who, if he have a skilful and industrious wife,
will, unless he be of a singularly foolish turn, gladly leave all these things to
her absolute dominion, controlled only by the extent of the whole
expenditure, of which he must be the best, and, indeed, the sole, judge.
119. But, in a farmer's or a tradesman's family, the manual performance is
absolutely necessary, whether there be servants or not. No one knows how
to teach another so well as one who has done, and can do, the thing himself.
It was said of a famous French commander, that, in attacking an enemy, he
did not say to his men 'go on,' but 'come on;' and, whoever have well
observed the movements of servants, must know what a prodigious
difference there is in the effect of the words, go and come. A very good rule
would be, to have nothing to eat, in a farmer's or tradesman's house, that the
mistress did not know how to prepare and to cook; no pudding, tart, pie or
cake, that she did not know how to make. Never fear the toil to her: exercise
is good for health; and without health there is no beauty; a sick beauty may
excite pity, but pity is a short-lived passion. Besides, what is the labour in
such a case? And how many thousands of ladies, who loll away the day,
would give half their fortunes for that sound sleep which the stirring house-
wife seldom fails to enjoy.
120. Yet, if a young farmer or tradesman marry a girl, who has been
brought up to play music, to what is called draw, to sing, to waste paper,
pen and ink, in writing long and half romantic letters, and to see shows, and
plays, and read novels; if a young man do marry such an unfortunate young

creature, let him bear the consequences with temper; let him be just; and
justice will teach him to treat her with great indulgence; to endeavour to
cause her to learn her business as a wife; to be patient with her; to reflect
that he has taken her, being apprised of her inability; to bear in mind, that he
was, or seemed to be, pleased with her showy and useless acquirements;
and that, when the gratification of his passion has been accomplished, he is
unjust and cruel and unmanly, if he turn round upon her, and accuse her of a
want of that knowledge, which he well knew that she did not possess.
121. For my part, I do not know, nor can I form an idea of, a more
unfortunate being than a girl with a mere boarding-school education, and
without a fortune to enable her to keep a servant, when married. Of what
use are her accomplishments? Of what use her music, her drawing, and her
romantic epistles? If she be good in her nature, the first little faint cry of her
first baby drives all the tunes and all the landscapes and all the Clarissa
Harlowes out of her head for ever. I once saw a very striking instance of
this sort. It was a climb-over-the-wall match, and I gave the bride away, at
St. Margaret's Church, Westminster, the pair being as handsome a pair as
ever I saw in my life. Beauty, however, though in double quantity, would
not pay the baker and butcher; and, after an absence of little better than a
year, I found the husband in prison for debt; but I there found also his wife,
with her baby, and she, who had never, before her marriage, known what it
was to get water to wash her own hands, and whose talk was all about
music, and the like, was now the cheerful sustainer of her husband, and the
most affectionate of mothers. All the music and all the drawing, and all the
plays and romances were gone to the winds! The husband and baby had
fairly supplanted them; and even this prison-scene was a blessing, as it gave
her, at this early stage, an opportunity of proving her devotion to her
husband, who, though I have not seen him for about fifteen years, he being
in a part of America which I could not reach when last there, has, I am sure,
amply repaid her for that devotion. They have now a numerous family (not
less than twelve children, I believe), and she is, I am told, a most excellent
and able mistress of a respectable house.
122. But, this is a rare instance: the husband, like his countrymen in
general, was at once brave, humane, gentle, and considerate, and the love
was so sincere and ardent, on both sides, that it made losses and sufferings
appear as nothing. When I, in a sort of half-whisper, asked Mrs. DICKENS

where her piano was, she smiled, and turned her face towards her baby, that
was sitting on her knee; as much as to say, 'This little fellow has beaten the
piano;' and, if what I am now writing should ever have the honour to be
read by her, let it be the bearer of a renewed expression of my admiration of
her conduct, and of that regard for her kind and sensible husband, which
time and distance have not in the least diminished, and which will be an
inmate of my heart until it shall cease to beat.
123. The like of this is, however, not to be expected: no man ought to think
that he has even a chance of it: besides, the husband was, in this case, a man
of learning and of great natural ability: he has not had to get his bread by
farming or trade; and, in all probability, his wife has had the leisure to
practise those acquirements which she possessed at the time of her
marriage. But, can this be the case with the farmer or the tradesman's wife?
She has to help to earn a provision for her children; or, at the least, to help
to earn a store for sickness or old age. She, therefore, ought to be qualified
to begin, at once, to assist her husband in his earnings: the way in which she
can most efficiently assist, is by taking care of his property; by expending
his money to the greatest advantage; by wasting nothing; by making the
table sufficiently abundant with the least expense. And how is she to do
these things, unless she have been brought up to understand domestic
affairs? How is she to do these things, if she have been taught to think these
matters beneath her study? How is any man to expect her to do these things,
if she have been so bred up as to make her habitually look upon them as
worthy the attention of none but low and ignorant women?
124. Ignorant, indeed! Ignorance consists in a want of knowledge of those
things which your calling or state of life naturally supposes you to
understand. A ploughman is not an ignorant man because he does not know
how to read: if he knows how to plough, he is not to be called an ignorant
man; but, a wife may be justly called an ignorant woman, if she does not
know how to provide a dinner for her husband. It is cold comfort for a
hungry man, to tell him how delightfully his wife plays and sings: lovers
may live on very aërial diet; but husbands stand in need of the solids; and
young women may take my word for it, that a constantly clean board, well
cooked victuals, a house in order, and a cheerful fire, will do more in
preserving a husband's heart, than all the 'accomplishments,' taught in all the
'establishments' in the world.

125. GOOD TEMPER. This is a very difficult thing to ascertain
beforehand. Smiles are so cheap; they are so easily put on for the occasion;
and, besides, the frowns are, according to the lover's whim, interpreted into
the contrary. By 'good temper,' I do not mean easy temper, a serenity which
nothing disturbs, for that is a mark of laziness. Sulkiness, if you be not too
blind to perceive it, is a temper to be avoided by all means. A sulky man is
bad enough; what, then, must be a sulky woman, and that woman a wife; a
constant inmate, a companion day and night! Only think of the delight of
sitting at the same table, and sleeping in the same bed, for a week, and not
exchange a word all the while! Very bad to be scolding for such a length of
time; but this is far better than the sulks. If you have your eyes, and look
sharp, you will discover symptoms of this, if it unhappily exist. She will, at
some time or other, show it towards some one or other of the family; or,
perhaps, towards yourself; and you may be quite sure that, in this respect,
marriage will not mend her. Sulkiness arises from capricious displeasure,
displeasure not founded in reason. The party takes offence unjustifiably; is
unable to frame a complaint, and therefore expresses displeasure by silence.
The remedy for sulkiness is, to suffer it to take its full swing; but it is better
not to have the disease in your house; and to be married to it is little short
of madness.
126. Querulousness is a great fault. No man, and, especially, no woman,
likes to hear eternal plaintiveness. That she complain, and roundly
complain, of your want of punctuality, of your coolness, of your neglect, of
your liking the company of others: these are all very well, more especially
as they are frequently but too just. But an everlasting complaining, without
rhyme or reason, is a bad sign. It shows want of patience, and, indeed, want
of sense. But, the contrary of this, a cold indifference, is still worse. 'When
will you come again? You can never find time to come here. You like any
company better than mine.' These, when groundless, are very teasing, and
demonstrate a disposition too full of anxiousness; but, from a girl who
always receives you with the same civil smile, lets you, at your own good
pleasure, depart with the same; and who, when you take her by the hand,
holds her cold fingers as straight as sticks, I say (or should if I were young),
God, in his mercy, preserve me!
127. Pertinacity is a very bad thing in anybody, and especially in a young
woman; and it is sure to increase in force with the age of the party. To have

the last word is a poor triumph; but with some people it is a species of
disease of the mind. In a wife it must be extremely troublesome; and, if you
find an ounce of it in the maid, it will become a pound in the wife. An
eternal disputer is a most disagreeable companion; and where young
women thrust their say into conversations carried on by older persons, give
their opinions in a positive manner, and court a contest of the tongue, those
must be very bold men who will encounter them as wives.
128. Still, of all the faults as to temper, your melancholy ladies have the
worst, unless you have the same mental disease. Most wives are, at times,
misery-makers; but these carry it on as a regular trade. They are always
unhappy about something, either past, present, or to come. Both arms full of
children is a pretty efficient remedy in most cases; but, if the ingredients be
wanting, a little want, a little real trouble, a little genuine affliction must, if
you would effect a cure, be resorted to. But, this is very painful to a man of
any feeling; and, therefore, the best way is to avoid a connexion, which is to
give you a life of wailing and sighs.
129. BEAUTY. Though I have reserved this to the last of the things to be
desired in a wife, I by no means think it the last in point of importance. The
less favoured part of the sex say, that 'beauty is but skin-deep;' and this is
very true; but, it is very agreeable, though, for all that. Pictures are only
paint-deep, or pencil-deep; but we admire them, nevertheless. "Handsome is
that handsome does," used to say to me an old man, who had marked me
out for his not over handsome daughter. 'Please your eye and plague your
heart' is an adage that want of beauty invented, I dare say, more than a
thousand years ago. These adages would say, if they had but the courage,
that beauty is inconsistent with chastity, with sobriety of conduct, and with
all the female virtues. The argument is, that beauty exposes the possessor to
greater temptation than women not beautiful are exposed to; and that,
therefore, their fall is more probable. Let us see a little how this matter
stands.
130. It is certainly true, that pretty girls will have more, and more ardent,
admirers than ugly ones; but, as to the temptation when in their unmarried
state, there are few so very ugly as to be exposed to no temptation at all;
and, which is the most likely to resist; she who has a choice of lovers, or
she who if she let the occasion slip may never have it again? Which of the

two is most likely to set a high value upon her reputation, she whom all
beholders admire, or she who is admired, at best, by mere chance? And as
to women in the married state, this argument assumes, that, when they fall,
it is from their own vicious disposition; when the fact is, that, if you search
the annals of conjugal infidelity, you will find, that, nine times out of ten,
the fault is in the husband. It is his neglect, his flagrant disregard, his frosty
indifference, his foul example; it is to these that, nine times out of ten, he
owes the infidelity of his wife; and, if I were to say ninety-nine times out of
a hundred, the facts, if verified, would, I am certain, bear me out. And
whence this neglect, this disregard, this frosty indifference; whence this foul
example? Because it is easy, in so many cases, to find some woman more
beautiful than the wife. This is no justification for the husband to plead; for
he has, with his eyes open, made a solemn contract: if he have not beauty
enough to please him, he should have sought it in some other woman: if, as
is frequently the case, he have preferred rank or money to beauty, he is an
unprincipled man, if he do any thing to make her unhappy who has brought
him the rank or the money. At any rate, as conjugal infidelity is, in so many
cases; as it is generally caused by the want of affection and due attention in
the husband, it follows, of course, that it must more frequently happen in
the case of ugly than in that of handsome women.
131. In point of dress, nothing need be said to convince any reasonable
man, that beautiful women will be less expensive in this respect than
women of a contrary description. Experience teaches us, that ugly women
are always the most studious about their dress; and, if we had never
observed upon the subject, reason would tell us, that it must be so. Few
women are handsome without knowing it; and if they know that their
features naturally attract admiration, will they desire to draw it off, and to
fix it on lace and silks and jewels?
132. As to manners and temper there are certainly some handsome women
who are conceited and arrogant; but, as they have all the best reasons in the
world for being pleased with themselves, they afford you the best chance of
general good humour; and this good humour is a very valuable commodity
in the married state. Some that are called handsome, and that are such at the
first glance, are dull, inanimate things, that might as well have been made
of wax, or of wood. But, the truth is, that this is not beauty, for this is not to
be found only in the form of the features, but in the movements of them

also. Besides, here nature is very impartial; for she gives animation
promiscuously to the handsome as well as to the ugly; and the want of this
in the former is surely as bearable as in the latter.
133. But, the great use of female beauty, the great practical advantage of it
is, that it naturally and unavoidably tends to keep the husband in good
humour with himself, to make him, to use the dealer's phrase, pleased with
his bargain. When old age approaches, and the parties have become
endeared to each other by a long series of joint cares and interests, and
when children have come and bound them together by the strongest ties that
nature has in store; at this age the features and the person are of less
consequence; but, in the young days of matrimony, when the roving eye of
the bachelor is scarcely become steady in the head of the husband, it is
dangerous for him to see, every time he stirs out, a face more captivating
than that of the person to whom he is bound for life. Beauty is, in some
degree, a matter of taste: what one man admires, another does not; and it is
fortunate for us that it is thus. But still there are certain things that all men
admire; and a husband is always pleased when he perceives that a portion,
at least, of these things are in his own possession: he takes this possession
as a compliment to himself: there must, he will think the world will believe,
have been some merit in him, some charm, seen or unseen, to have caused
him to be blessed with the acquisition.
134. And then there arise so many things, sickness, misfortune in business,
losses, many many things, wholly unexpected; and, there are so many
circumstances, perfectly nameless, to communicate to the new-married man
the fact, that it is not a real angel of whom he has got the possession; there
are so many things of this sort, so many and such powerful dampers of the
passions, and so many incentives to cool reflection; that it requires
something, and a good deal too, to keep the husband in countenance in this
his altered and enlightened state. The passion of women does not cool so
soon: the lamp of their love burns more steadily, and even brightens as it
burns: and, there is, the young man may be assured, a vast difference in the
effect of the fondness of a pretty woman and that of one of a different
description; and, let reason and philosophy say what they will, a man will
come down stairs of a morning better pleased after seeing the former, than
he would after seeing the latter, in her night-cap.

135. To be sure, when a man has, from whatever inducement, once married
a woman, he is unjust and cruel if he even slight her on account of her want
of beauty, and, if he treat her harshly, on this account, he is a brute. But, it
requires a greater degree of reflection and consideration than falls to the lot
of men in general to make them act with justice in such a case; and,
therefore, the best way is to guard, if you can, against the temptation to
commit such injustice, which is to be done in no other way, than by not
marrying any one that you do not think handsome.
136. I must not conclude this address to THE LOVER without something
on the subject of seduction and inconstancy. In, perhaps, nineteen cases out
of twenty, there is, in the unfortunate cases of illicit gratification, no
seduction at all, the passion, the absence of virtue, and the crime, being all
mutual. But, there are other cases of a very different description; and where
a man goes coolly and deliberately to work, first to gain and rivet the
affections of a young girl, then to take advantage of those affections to
accomplish that which he knows must be her ruin, and plunge her into
misery for life; when a man does this merely for the sake of a momentary
gratification, he must be either a selfish and unfeeling brute, unworthy of
the name of man, or he must have a heart little inferior, in point of
obduracy, to that of the murderer. Let young women, however, be aware; let
them be well aware, that few, indeed, are the cases in which this apology
can possibly avail them. Their character is not solely theirs, but belongs, in
part, to their family and kindred. They may, in the case contemplated, be
objects of compassion with the world; but what contrition, what repentance,
what remorse, what that even the tenderest benevolence can suggest, is to
heal the wounded hearts of humbled, disgraced, but still affectionate,
parents, brethren and sisters?
137. As to constancy in Lovers, though I do not approve of the saying, 'At
lovers' lies Jove laughs;' yet, when people are young, one object may
supplant another in their affections, not only without criminality in the party
experiencing the change, but without blame; and it is honest, and even
humane, to act upon the change; because it would be both foolish and cruel
to marry one girl while you liked another better: and the same holds good
with regard to the other sex. Even when marriage has been promised, and
that, too, in the most solemn manner, it is better for both parties to break
off, than to be coupled together with the reluctant assent of either; and I

have always thought, that actions for damages, on this score, if brought by
the girl, show a want of delicacy as well as of spirit; and, if brought by the
man, excessive meanness. Some damage may, indeed, have been done to
the complaining party; but no damage equal to what that party would have
sustained from a marriage, to which the other party would have yielded by a
sort of compulsion, producing to almost a certainty what Hogarth, in his
Marriage à la Mode, most aptly typifies by two curs, of different sexes,
fastened together by what sportsmen call couples, pulling different ways,
and snarling and barking and foaming like furies.
138. But when promises have been made to a young woman; when they
have been relied on for any considerable time; when it is manifest that her
peace and happiness, and, perhaps, her life, depend upon their fulfilment;
when things have been carried to this length, the change in the Lover ought
to be announced in the manner most likely to make the disappointment as
supportable as the case will admit of; for, though it is better to break the
promise than to marry one while you like another better; though it is better
for both parties, you have no right to break the heart of her who has, and
that, too, with your accordance, and, indeed, at your instigation, or, at least,
by your encouragement, confided it to your fidelity. You cannot help your
change of affections; but you can help making the transfer in such a way as
to cause the destruction, or even probable destruction, nay, if it were but the
deep misery, of her, to gain whose heart you had pledged your own. You
ought to proceed by slow degrees; you ought to call time to your aid in
executing the painful task; you ought scrupulously to avoid every thing
calculated to aggravate the sufferings of the disconsolate party.
139. A striking, a monstrous, instance of conduct the contrary of this has
recently been placed upon the melancholy records of the Coroner of
Middlesex; which have informed an indignant public, that a young man,
having first secured the affections of a virtuous young woman, next
promised her marriage, then caused the banns to be published, and then, on
the very day appointed for the performance of the ceremony, married
another woman, in the same church; and this, too, without, as he avowed,
any provocation, and without the smallest intimation or hint of his intention
to the disappointed party, who, unable to support existence under a blow so
cruel, put an end to that existence by the most deadly and the swiftest
poison. If any thing could wipe from our country the stain of having given

birth to a monster so barbarous as this, it would be the abhorrence of him
which the jury expressed; and which, from every tongue, he ought to hear to
the last moment of his life.
140. Nor has a man any right to sport with the affections of a young
woman, though he stop short of positive promises. Vanity is generally the
tempter in this case; a desire to be regarded as being admired by the
women: a very despicable species of vanity, but frequently greatly
mischievous, notwithstanding. You do not, indeed, actually, in so many
words, promise to marry; but the general tenor of your language and
deportment has that meaning; you know that your meaning is so
understood; and if you have not such meaning; if you be fixed by some
previous engagement with, or greater liking for, another; if you know you
are here sowing the seeds of disappointment; and if you, keeping your
previous engagement or greater liking a secret, persevere, in spite of the
admonitions of conscience, you are guilty of deliberate deception, injustice
and cruelty: you make to God an ungrateful return for those endowments
which have enabled you to achieve this inglorious and unmanly triumph;
and if, as is frequently the case, you glory in such triumph, you may have
person, riches, talents to excite envy; but every just and humane man will
abhor your heart.
141. There are, however, certain cases in which you deceive, or nearly
deceive, yourself; cases in which you are, by degrees and by circumstances,
deluded into something very nearly resembling sincere love for a second
object, the first still, however, maintaining her ground in your heart; cases
in which you are not actuated by vanity, in which you are not guilty of
injustice and cruelty; but cases in which you, nevertheless, do wrong: and as
I once did a wrong of this sort myself, I will here give a history of it, as a
warning to every young man who shall read this little book; that being the
best and, indeed, the only atonement, that I can make, or ever could have
made, for this only serious sin that I ever committed against the female sex.
142. The Province of New Brunswick, in North America, in which I passed
my years from the age of eighteen to that of twenty-six, consists, in general,
of heaps of rocks, in the interstices of which grow the pine, the spruce, and
various sorts of fir trees, or, where the woods have been burnt down, the
bushes of the raspberry or those of the huckleberry. The province is cut

asunder lengthwise, by a great river, called the St. John, about two hundred
miles in length, and, at half way from the mouth, full a mile wide. Into this
main river run innumerable smaller rivers, there called CREEKS. On the
sides of these creeks the land is, in places, clear of rocks; it is, in these
places, generally good and productive; the trees that grow here are the
birch, the maple, and others of the deciduous class; natural meadows here
and there present themselves; and some of these spots far surpass in rural
beauty any other that my eyes ever beheld; the creeks, abounding towards
their sources in water-falls of endless variety, as well in form as in
magnitude, and always teeming with fish, while water-fowl enliven their
surface, and while wild-pigeons, of the gayest plumage, flutter, in thousands
upon thousands, amongst the branches of the beautiful trees, which,
sometimes, for miles together, form an arch over the creeks.
143. I, in one of my rambles in the woods, in which I took great delight,
came to a spot at a very short distance from the source of one of these
creeks. Here was every thing to delight the eye, and especially of one like
me, who seem to have been born to love rural life, and trees and plants of
all sorts. Here were about two hundred acres of natural meadow,
interspersed with patches of maple-trees in various forms and of various
extent; the creek (there about thirty miles from its point of joining the St.
John) ran down the middle of the spot, which formed a sort of dish, the high
and rocky hills rising all round it, except at the outlet of the creek, and these
hills crowned with lofty pines: in the hills were the sources of the creek, the
waters of which came down in cascades, for any one of which many a
nobleman in England would, if he could transfer it, give a good slice of his
fertile estate; and in the creek, at the foot of the cascades, there were, in the
season, salmon the finest in the world, and so abundant, and so easily taken,
as to be used for manuring the land.
144. If nature, in her very best humour, had made a spot for the express
purpose of captivating me, she could not have exceeded the efforts which
she had here made. But I found something here besides these rude works of
nature; I found something in the fashioning of which man had had
something to do. I found a large and well-built log dwelling house, standing
(in the month of September) on the edge of a very good field of Indian
Corn, by the side of which there was a piece of buck-wheat just then
mowed. I found a homestead, and some very pretty cows. I found all the

things by which an easy and happy farmer is surrounded: and I found still
something besides all these; something that was destined to give me a great
deal of pleasure and also a great deal of pain, both in their extreme degree;
and both of which, in spite of the lapse of forty years, now make an attempt
to rush back into my heart.
145. Partly from misinformation, and partly from miscalculation, I had lost
my way; and, quite alone, but armed with my sword and a brace of pistols,
to defend myself against the bears, I arrived at the log-house in the middle
of a moonlight night, the hoar frost covering the trees and the grass. A stout
and clamorous dog, kept off by the gleaming of my sword, waked the
master of the house, who got up, received me with great hospitality, got me
something to eat, and put me into a feather-bed, a thing that I had been a
stranger to for some years. I, being very tired, had tried to pass the night in
the woods, between the trunks of two large trees, which had fallen side by
side, and within a yard of each other. I had made a nest for myself of dry
fern, and had made a covering by laying boughs of spruce across the trunks
of the trees. But unable to sleep on account of the cold; becoming sick from
the great quantity of water that I had drank during the heat of the day, and
being, moreover, alarmed at the noise of the bears, and lest one of them
should find me in a defenceless state, I had roused myself up, and had crept
along as well as I could. So that no hero of eastern romance ever
experienced a more enchanting change.
146. I had got into the house of one of those YANKEE LOYALISTS, who,
at the close of the revolutionary war (which, until it had succeeded, was
called a rebellion) had accepted of grants of land in the King's Province of
New Brunswick; and who, to the great honour of England, had been
furnished with all the means of making new and comfortable settlements. I
was suffered to sleep till breakfast time, when I found a table, the like of
which I have since seen so many in the United States, loaded with good
things. The master and the mistress of the house, aged about fifty, were like
what an English farmer and his wife were half a century ago. There were
two sons, tall and stout, who appeared to have come in from work, and the
youngest of whom was about my age, then twenty-three. But there was
another member of the family, aged nineteen, who (dressed according to the
neat and simple fashion of New England, whence she had come with her
parents five or six years before) had her long light-brown hair twisted

nicely up, and fastened on the top of her head, in which head were a pair of
lively blue eyes, associated with features of which that softness and that
sweetness, so characteristic of American girls, were the predominant
expressions, the whole being set off by a complexion indicative of glowing
health, and forming, figure, movements, and all taken together, an
assemblage of beauties, far surpassing any that I had ever seen but once in
my life. That once was, too, two years agone; and, in such a case and at
such an age, two years, two whole years, is a long, long while! It was a
space as long as the eleventh part of my then life! Here was the present
against the absent: here was the power of the eyes pitted against that of the
memory: here were all the senses up in arms to subdue the influence of the
thoughts: here was vanity, here was passion, here was the spot of all spots
in the world, and here were also the life, and the manners and the habits and
the pursuits that I delighted in: here was every thing that imagination can
conceive, united in a conspiracy against the poor little brunette in England!
What, then, did I fall in love at once with this bouquet of lilies and roses?
Oh! by no means. I was, however, so enchanted with the place; I so much
enjoyed its tranquillity, the shade of the maple trees, the business of the
farm, the sports of the water and of the woods, that I stayed at it to the last
possible minute, promising, at my departure, to come again as often as I
possibly could; a promise which I most punctually fulfilled.
147. Winter is the great season for jaunting and dancing (called frolicking)
in America. In this Province the river and the creeks were the only roads
from settlement to settlement. In summer we travelled in canoes; in winter
in sleighs on the ice or snow. During more than two years I spent all the
time I could with my Yankee friends: they were all fond of me: I talked to
them about country affairs, my evident delight in which they took as a
compliment to themselves: the father and mother treated me as one of their
children; the sons as a brother; and the daughter, who was as modest and as
full of sensibility as she was beautiful, in a way to which a chap much less
sanguine than I was would have given the tenderest interpretation; which
treatment I, especially in the last-mentioned case, most cordially repaid.
148. It is when you meet in company with others of your own age that you
are, in love matters, put, most frequently, to the test, and exposed to
detection. The next door neighbour might, in that country, be ten miles off.
We used to have a frolic, sometimes at one house and sometimes at another.

Here, where female eyes are very much on the alert, no secret can long be
kept; and very soon father, mother, brothers and the whole neighbourhood
looked upon the thing as certain, not excepting herself, to whom I, however,
had never once even talked of marriage, and had never even told her that I
loved her. But I had a thousand times done these by implication, taking into
view the interpretation that she would naturally put upon my looks,
appellations and acts; and it was of this, that I had to accuse myself. Yet I
was not a deceiver; for my affection for her was very great: I spent no really
pleasant hours but with her: I was uneasy if she showed the slightest regard
for any other young man: I was unhappy if the smallest matter affected her
health or spirits: I quitted her in dejection, and returned to her with eager
delight: many a time, when I could get leave but for a day, I paddled in a
canoe two whole succeeding nights, in order to pass that day with her. If
this was not love, it was first cousin to it; for as to any criminal intention I
no more thought of it, in her case, than if she had been my sister. Many
times I put to myself the questions: 'What am I at? Is not this wrong? Why
do I go?' But still I went.
149. Then, further in my excuse, my prior engagement, though carefully
left unalluded to by both parties, was, in that thin population, and owing to
the singular circumstances of it, and to the great talk that there always was
about me, perfectly well known to her and all her family. It was matter of so
much notoriety and conversation in the Province, that GENERAL
CARLETON (brother of the late Lord Dorchester), who was the Governor
when I was there, when he, about fifteen years afterwards, did me the
honour, on his return to England, to come and see me at my house in Duke
Street, Westminster, asked, before he went away, to see my wife, of whom
he had heard so much before her marriage. So that here was no deception
on my part: but still I ought not to have suffered even the most distant hope
to be entertained by a person so innocent, so amiable, for whom I had so
much affection, and to whose heart I had no right to give a single twinge. I
ought, from the very first, to have prevented the possibility of her ever
feeling pain on my account. I was young, to be sure; but I was old enough
to know what was my duty in this case, and I ought, dismissing my own
feelings, to have had the resolution to perform it.
150. The last parting came; and now came my just punishment! The time
was known to every body, and was irrevocably fixed; for I had to move

with a regiment, and the embarkation of a regiment is an epoch in a thinly
settled province. To describe this parting would be too painful even at this
distant day, and with this frost of age upon my head. The kind and virtuous
father came forty miles to see me just as I was going on board in the river.
His looks and words I have never forgotten. As the vessel descended, she
passed the mouth of that creek which I had so often entered with delight;
and though England, and all that England contained, were before me, I lost
sight of this creek with an aching heart.
151. On what trifles turn the great events in the life of man! If I had
received a cool letter from my intended wife; if I had only heard a rumour
of any thing from which fickleness in her might have been inferred; if I had
found in her any, even the smallest, abatement of affection; if she had but
let go any one of the hundred strings by which she held my heart: if any of
these, never would the world have heard of me. Young as I was; able as I
was as a soldier; proud as I was of the admiration and commendations of
which I was the object; fond as I was, too, of the command, which, at so
early an age, my rare conduct and great natural talents had given me;
sanguine as was my mind, and brilliant as were my prospects: yet I had seen
so much of the meannesses, the unjust partialities, the insolent pomposity,
the disgusting dissipations of that way of life, that I was weary of it: I
longed, exchanging my fine laced coat for the Yankee farmer's home-spun,
to be where I should never behold the supple crouch of servility, and never
hear the hectoring voice of authority, again; and, on the lonely banks of this
branch-covered creek, which contained (she out of the question) every thing
congenial to my taste and dear to my heart, I, unapplauded, unfeared,
unenvied and uncalumniated, should have lived and died.

LETTER IV

TO A HUSBAND
152. It is in this capacity that your conduct will have the greatest effect on
your happiness; and a great deal will depend on the manner in which you
begin. I am to suppose that you have made a good choice; but a good young
woman may be made, by a weak, a harsh, a neglectful, an extravagant, or a
profligate husband, a really bad wife and mother. All in a wife, beyond her
own natural disposition and education is, nine times out of ten, the work of
her husband.
153. The first thing of all, be the rank in life what it may, is to convince her
of the necessity of moderation in expense; and to make her clearly see the
justice of beginning to act upon the presumption, that there are children
coming, that they are to be provided for, and that she is to assist in the
making of that provision. Legally speaking, we have a right to do what we
please with our own property, which, however, is not our own, unless it
exceed our debts. And, morally speaking, we, at the moment of our
marriage, contract a debt with the naturally to be expected fruit of it; and,
therefore (reserving further remarks upon this subject till I come to speak of
the education of children), the scale of expense should, at the beginning, be
as low as that of which a due attention to rank in life will admit.
154. The great danger of all is, beginning with servants, or a servant. Where
there are riches, or where the business is so great as to demand help in the
carrying on of the affairs of a house, one or more female servants must be
kept; but, where the work of a house can be done by one pair of hands, why
should there be two; especially as you cannot have the hands without
having the mouth, and, which is frequently not less costly, inconvenient and
injurious, the tongue? When children come, there must, at times, be some
foreign aid; but, until then, what need can the wife of a young tradesman, or
even farmer (unless the family be great) have of a servant? The wife is
young, and why is she not to work as well as the husband? What justice is
there in wanting you to keep two women instead of one? You have not
married them both in form; but, if they be inseparable, you have married

them in substance; and if you are free from the crime of bigamy, you have
the far most burthensome part of its consequences.
155. I am well aware of the unpopularity of this doctrine; well aware of its
hostility to prevalent habits; well aware that almost every tradesman and
every farmer, though with scarcely a shilling to call his own; and that every
clerk, and every such person, begins by keeping a servant, and that the latter
is generally provided before the wife be installed: I am well aware of all
this; but knowing, from long and attentive observation, that it is the great
bane of the marriage life; the great cause of that penury, and of those
numerous and tormenting embarrassments, amidst which conjugal felicity
can seldom long be kept alive, I give the advice, and state the reasons on
which it was founded.
156. In London, or near it, a maid servant cannot be kept at an expense so
low as that of thirty pounds a year; for, besides her wages, board and
lodging, there must be a fire solely for her; or she must sit with the husband
and wife, hear every word that passes between them, and between them and
their friends; which will, of course, greatly add to the pleasures of their fire-
side! To keep her tongue still would be impossible, and, indeed,
unreasonable; and if, as may frequently happen, she be prettier than the
wife, she will know how to give the suitable interpretation to the looks
which, to a next to a certainty, she will occasionally get from him, whom, as
it were in mockery, she calls by the name of 'master.' This is almost
downright bigamy; but this can never do; and, therefore, she must have a
fire to herself. Besides the blaze of coals, however, there is another sort of
flame that she will inevitably covet. She will by no means be sparing of the
coals; but, well fed and well lodged, as she will be, whatever you may be,
she will naturally sigh for the fire of love, for which she carries in her
bosom a match always ready prepared. In plain language, you have a man
to keep, a part, at least, of every week; and the leg of lamb, which might
have lasted you and your wife for three days, will, by this gentleman's
sighs, be borne away in one. Shut the door against this intruder; out she
goes herself; and, if she go empty-handed, she is no true Christian, or, at
least, will not be looked upon as such by the charitable friend at whose
house she meets the longing soul, dying partly with love and partly with
hunger.

157. The cost, altogether, is nearer fifty pounds a year than thirty. How
many thousands of tradesmen and clerks, and the like, who might have
passed through life without a single embarrassment, have lived in continual
trouble and fear, and found a premature grave, from this very cause, and
this cause alone! When I, on my return from America, in 1800, lived a short
time in Saint James's Street, following my habit of early rising, I used to see
the servant maids, at almost every house, dispensing charity at the expense
of their masters, long before they, good men, opened their eyes, who thus
did deeds of benevolence, not only without boasting of them, but without
knowing of them. Meat, bread, cheese, butter, coals, candles; all came with
equal freedom from these liberal hands. I have observed the same, in my
early walks and rides, in every part of this great place and its environs.
Where there is one servant it is worse than where there are two or more; for,
happily for their employers, they do not always agree. So that the
oppression is most heavy on those who are the least able to bear it: and
particularly on clerk, and such like people, whose wives seem to think, that,
because the husband's work is of a genteel description, they ought to live
the life of ladies. Poor fellows! their work is not hard and rough, to be sure;
but, it is work, and work for many hours too, and painful enough; and as to
their income, it scarcely exceeds, on an average, the double, at any rate, of
that of a journeyman carpenter, bricklayer, or tailor.
158. Besides, the man and wife will live on cheaper diet and drink than a
servant will live. Thousands, who would never have had beer in their house,
have it for the servant, who will not live without it. However frugal your
wife, her frugality is of little use, if she have one of these inmates to provide
for. Many a hundred thousand times has it happened that the butcher and
the butter-man have been applied to solely because there was a servant to
satisfy. You cannot, with this clog everlastingly attached to you, be frugal, if
you would: you can save nothing against the days of expense, which are,
however, pretty sure to come. And why should you bring into your house a
trouble like this; an absolute annoyance; a something for your wife to
watch, to be a constraint upon her, to thwart her in her best intentions, to
make her uneasy, and to sour her temper? Why should you do this foolish
thing? Merely to comply with corrupt fashion; merely from false shame,
and false and contemptible pride? If a young man were, on his marriage, to
find any difficulty in setting this ruinous fashion at defiance, a very good

way would be to count down to his wife, at the end of every week, the
amount of the expense of a servant for that week, and request her to deposit
it in her drawer. In a short time she would find the sum so large, that she
would be frightened at the thoughts of a servant; and would never dream of
one again, except in case of absolute necessity, and then for as short a time
as possible.
159. But the wife may not be able to do all the work to be done in the
house. Not able! A young woman not able to cook and wash, and mend and
make, and clean the house and make the bed for one young man and
herself, and that young man her husband too, who is quite willing (if he be
worth a straw) to put up with cold dinner, or with a crust; to get up and light
her fire; to do any thing that the mind can suggest to spare her labour, and to
conduce to her convenience! Not able to do this? Then, if she brought no
fortune, and he had none, she ought not to have been able to marry: and, let
me tell you, young man, a small fortune would not put a servant-keeping
wife upon an equality with one who required no such inmate.
160. If, indeed, the work of a house were harder than a young woman could
perform without pain, or great fatigue; if it had a tendency to impair her
health or deface her beauty; then you might hesitate: but, it is not too hard,
and it tends to preserve health, to keep the spirits buoyant, and, of course, to
preserve beauty. You often hear girls, while scrubbing or washing, singing
till they are out of breath; but never while they are at what they call working
at the needle. The American wives are most exemplary in this respect. They
have none of that false pride, which prevents thousands in England from
doing that which interest, reason, and even their own inclination would
prompt them to do. They work, not from necessity; not from compulsion of
any sort; for their husbands are the most indulgent in the whole world. In
the towns they go to the market, and cheerfully carry home the result: in the
country, they not only do the work in the house, but extend their labours to
the garden, plant and weed and hoe, and gather and preserve the fruits and
the herbs; and this, too, in a climate far from being so favourable to labour
as that of England; and they are amply repaid for these by those
gratifications which their excellent economy enables their husbands to
bestow upon them, and which it is their universal habit to do with a liberal
hand.

161. But did I practise what I am here preaching? Aye, and to the full
extent. Till I had a second child, no servant ever entered my house, though
well able to keep one; and never, in my whole life, did I live in a house so
clean, in such trim order, and never have I eaten or drunk, or slept or
dressed, in a manner so perfectly to my fancy, as I did then. I had a great
deal of business to attend to, that took me a great part of the day from
home; but, whenever I could spare a minute from business, the child was in
my arms; I rendered the mother's labour as light as I could; any bit of food
satisfied me; when watching was necessary, we shared it between us; and
that famous GRAMMAR for teaching French people English, which has
been for thirty years, and still is, the great work of this kind, throughout all
America, and in every nation in Europe, was written by me, in hours not
employed in business, and, in great part, during my share of the night-
watchings over a sick, and then only child, who, after lingering many
months, died in my arms.
162. This was the way that we went on: this was the way that we began the
married life; and surely, that which we did with pleasure no young couple,
unendowed with fortune, ought to be ashamed to do. But she may be ill; the
time may be near at hand, or may have actually arrived, when she must
encounter that particular pain and danger of which you have been the happy
cause! Oh! that is quite another matter! And if you now exceed in care, in
watchings over her, in tender attention to all her wishes, in anxious efforts
to quiet her fears; if you exceed in pains and expense to procure her relief
and secure her life; if you, in any of these, exceed that which I would
recommend, you must be romantic indeed! She deserves them all, and more
than all, ten thousand times told. And now it is that you feel the blessing
conferred by her economy. That heap of money, which might have been
squandered on, or by, or in consequence of, an useless servant, you now
have in hand wherewith to procure an abundance of that skill and that
attendance of which she stands in absolute need; and she, when restored to
you in smiling health, has the just pride to reflect, that she may have owed
her life and your happiness to the effects of her industry.
163. It is the beginning that is every thing in this important case; and you
will have, perhaps, much to do to convince her, not that what you
recommend is advantageous; not that it is right; but to convince her that she
can do it without sinking below the station that she ought to maintain. She

would cheerfully do it; but there are her next-door neighbours, who do not
do it, though, in all other respects, on a par with her. It is not laziness, but
pernicious fashion, that you will have to combat. But the truth is, that there
ought to be no combat at all; this important matter ought to be settled and
fully agreed on beforehand. If she really love you, and have common sense,
she will not hesitate a moment; and if she be deficient in either of these
respects; and if you be so mad in love as to be unable to exist without her, it
is better to cease to exist at once, than to become the toiling and
embarrassed slave of a wasting and pillaging servant.
164. The next thing to be attended to is, your demeanor towards a young
wife. As to oldish ones, or widows, time and other things have, in most
cases, blunted their feelings, and rendered harsh or stern demeanor in the
husband a matter not of heart-breaking consequence. But with a young and
inexperienced one, the case is very different; and you should bear in mind,
that the first frown that she receives from you is a dagger to her heart.
Nature has so ordered it, that men shall become less ardent in their passion
after the wedding day; and that women shall not. Their ardour increases
rather than the contrary; and they are surprisingly quick-sighted and
inquisitive on this score. When the child comes, it divides this ardour with
the father; but until then you have it all; and if you have a mind to be happy,
repay it with all your soul. Let what may happen to put you out of humour
with others, let nothing put you out of humour with her. Let your words and
looks and manners be just what they were before you called her wife.
165. But now, and throughout your life, show your affection for her, and
your admiration of her, not in nonsensical compliment; not in picking up
her handkerchief, or her glove, or in carrying her fan or parasol; not, if you
have the means, in hanging trinkets and baubles upon her; not in making
yourself a fool by winking at, and seeming pleased at, her foibles, or follies,
or faults; but show them by acts of real goodness towards her; prove by
unequivocal deeds the high value that you set on her health and life and
peace of mind; let your praise of her go to the full extent of her deserts, but
let it be consistent with truth and with sense, and such as to convince her of
your sincerity. He who is the flatterer of his wife only prepares her ears for
the hyperbolical stuff of others. The kindest appellation that her Christian
name affords is the best you can use, especially before faces. An everlasting
'my dear' is but a sorry compensation for a want of that sort of love that

makes the husband cheerfully toil by day, break his rest by night, endure all
sorts of hardships, if the life or health of his wife demand it. Let your deeds,
and not your words, carry to her heart a daily and hourly confirmation of
the fact, that you value her health and life and happiness beyond all other
things in the world; and let this be manifest to her, particularly at those
times when life is always more or less in danger.
166. I began my young marriage days in and near Philadelphia. At one of
those times to which I have just alluded, in the middle of the burning hot
month of July, I was greatly afraid of fatal consequences to my wife for
want of sleep, she not having, after the great danger was over, had any sleep
for more than forty-eight hours. All great cities, in hot countries, are, I
believe, full of dogs; and they, in the very hot weather, keep up, during the
night, a horrible barking and fighting and howling. Upon the particular
occasion to which I am adverting, they made a noise so terrible and so
unremitted, that it was next to impossible that even a person in full health
and free from pain should obtain a minute's sleep. I was, about nine in the
evening, sitting by the bed: 'I do think,' said she, 'that I could go to sleep
now, if it were not for the dogs.' Down stairs I went, and out I sallied, in my
shirt and trowsers, and without shoes and stockings; and, going to a heap of
stones lying beside the road, set to work upon the dogs, going backward and
forward, and keeping them at two or three hundred yards' distance from the
house. I walked thus the whole night, barefooted, lest the noise of my shoes
might possibly reach her ears; and I remember that the bricks of the
causeway were, even in the night, so hot as to be disagreeable to my feet.
My exertions produced the desired effect: a sleep of several hours was the
consequence; and, at eight o'clock in the morning, off went I to a day's
business, which was to end at six in the evening.
167. Women are all patriots of the soil; and when her neighbours used to
ask my wife whether all English husbands were like hers, she boldly
answered in the affirmative. I had business to occupy the whole of my time,
Sundays and weekdays, except sleeping hours; but I used to make time to
assist her in the taking care of her baby, and in all sorts of things: get up,
light her fire, boil her tea-kettle, carry her up warm water in cold weather,
take the child while she dressed herself and got the breakfast ready, then
breakfast, get her in water and wood for the day, then dress myself neatly,
and sally forth to my business. The moment that was over I used to hasten

back to her again; and I no more thought of spending a moment away from
her, unless business compelled me, than I thought of quitting the country
and going to sea. The thunder and lightning are tremendous in America,
compared with what they are in England. My wife was, at one time, very
much afraid of thunder and lightning; and as is the feeling of all such
women, and, indeed, all men too, she wanted company, and particularly her
husband, in those times of danger. I knew well, of course, that my presence
would not diminish the danger; but, be I at what I might, if within reach of
home, I used to quit my business and hasten to her, the moment I perceived
a thunder storm approaching. Scores of miles have I, first and last, run on
this errand, in the streets of Philadelphia! The Frenchmen, who were my
scholars, used to laugh at me exceedingly on this account; and sometimes,
when I was making an appointment with them, they would say, with a smile
and a bow, 'Sauve la tonnerre toujours, Monsieur Cobbett.'
168. I never dangled about at the heels of my wife; seldom, very seldom,
ever walked out, as it is called, with her; I never 'went a walking' in the
whole course of my life; never went to walk without having some object in
view other than the walk; and, as I never could walk at a slow pace, it
would have been hard work for her to keep up with me; so that, in the
nearly forty years of our married life, we have not walked out together,
perhaps, twenty times. I hate a dangler, who is more like a footman than a
husband. It is very cheap to be kind in trifles; but that which rivets the
affections is not to be purchased with money. The great thing of all,
however, is to prove your anxiety at those times of peril to her, and for
which times you, nevertheless, wish. Upon those occasions I was never
from home, be the necessity for it ever so great: it was my rule, that every
thing must give way to that. In the year 1809, some English local
militiamen were flogged, in the Isle of Ely, in England, under a guard of
Hanoverians, then stationed in England. I, reading an account of this in a
London newspaper, called the COURIER, expressed my indignation at it in
such terms as it became an Englishman to do. The Attorney General, Gibbs,
was set on upon me; he harassed me for nearly a year, then brought me to
trial, and I was, by Ellenborough, Grose, Le Blanc, and Bailey, sentenced to
two years' imprisonment in Newgate, to pay a fine to the king of a thousand
pounds, and to be held in heavy bail for seven years after the expiration of
the imprisonment! Every one regarded it as a sentence of death. I lived in

the country at the time, seventy miles from London; I had a farm on my
hands; I had a family of small children, amongst whom I had constantly
lived; I had a most anxious and devoted wife, who was, too, in that state,
which rendered the separation more painful ten-fold. I was put into a place
amongst felons, from which I had to rescue myself at the price of twelve
guineas a week for the whole of the two years. The King, poor man! was, at
the close of my imprisonment, not in a condition to receive the thousand
pounds; but his son, the present king, punctually received it 'in his name
and behalf;' and he keeps it still.
169. The sentence, though it proved not to be one of death, was, in effect,
one of ruin, as far as then-possessed property went. But this really appeared
as nothing, compared with the circumstance, that I must now have a child
born in a felons' jail, or be absent from the scene at the time of the birth.
My wife, who had come to see me for the last time previous to her lying-in,
perceiving my deep dejection at the approach of her departure for Botley,
resolved not to go; and actually went and took a lodging as near to Newgate
as she could find one, in order that the communication between us might be
as speedy as possible; and in order that I might see the doctor, and receive
assurances from him relative to her state. The nearest lodging that she could
find was in Skinner-street, at the corner of a street leading to Smithfield. So
that there she was, amidst the incessant rattle of coaches and butchers' carts,
and the noise of cattle, dogs, and bawling men; instead of being in a quiet
and commodious country-house, with neighbours and servants and every
thing necessary about her. Yet, so great is the power of the mind in such
cases, she, though the circumstances proved uncommonly perilous, and
were attended with the loss of the child, bore her sufferings with the
greatest composure, because, at any minute she could send a message to,
and hear from, me. If she had gone to Botley, leaving me in that state of
anxiety in which she saw me, I am satisfied that she would have died; and
that event taking place at such a distance from me, how was I to
contemplate her corpse, surrounded by her distracted children, and to have
escaped death, or madness, myself? If such was not the effect of this
merciless act of the government towards me, that amiable body may be well
assured that I have taken and recorded the will for the deed, and that as such
it will live in my memory as long as that memory shall last.

170. I make no apology for this account of my own conduct, because
example is better than precept, and because I believe that my example may
have weight with many thousands, as it has had in respect to early rising,
abstinence, sobriety, industry, and mercy towards the poor. It is not, then,
dangling about after a wife; it is not the loading her with baubles and
trinkets; it is not the jaunting of her about from show to show, and from
what is called pleasure to pleasure. It is none of these that endears you to
her: it is the adherence to that part of the promise you have made her: 'With
my body I thee worship;' that is to say, respect and honour by personal
attention and acts of affection. And remember, that the greatest possible
proof that you can give of real and solid affection is to give her your time,
when not wanted in matters of business; when not wanted for the discharge
of some duty, either towards the public or towards private persons. Amongst
duties of this sort, we must, of course, in some ranks and circumstances of
life, include the intercourse amongst friends and neighbours, which may
frequently and reasonably call the husband from his home: but what are we
to think of the husband who is in the habit of leaving his own fire-side, after
the business of the day is over, and seeking promiscuous companions in the
ale or the coffee house? I am told that, in France, it is rare to meet with a
husband who does not spend every evening of his life in what is called a
caffé; that is to say, a place for no other purpose than that of gossipping,
drinking and gaming. And it is with great sorrow that I acknowledge that
many English husbands indulge too much in a similar habit. Drinking clubs,
smoking clubs, singing clubs, clubs of odd-fellows, whist clubs, sotting
clubs: these are inexcusable, they are censurable, they are at once foolish
and wicked, even in single men; what must they be, then, in husbands; and
how are they to answer, not only to their wives, but to their children, for this
profligate abandonment of their homes; this breach of their solemn vow
made to the former, this evil example to the latter?
171. Innumerable are the miseries that spring from this cause. The expense
is, in the first place, very considerable. I much question whether, amongst
tradesmen, a shilling a night pays the average score; and that, too, for that
which is really worth nothing at all, and cannot, even by possibility, be
attended with any one single advantage, however small. Fifteen pounds a
year thus thrown away, would amount, in the course of a tradesman's life, to
a decent fortune for a child. Then there is the injury to health from these

night adventures; there are the quarrels, there is the vicious habit of loose
and filthy talk; there are the slanders and the back-bitings; there is the
admiration of contemptible wit, and there are the scoffings at all that is
sober and serious.
172. And does the husband who thus abandons his wife and children
imagine that she will not, in some degree at least, follow his example? If he
do, he is very much deceived. If she imitate him even in drinking, he has no
great reason to complain; and then the cost may be two shillings the night
instead of one, equal in amount to the cost of all the bread wanted in the
family, while the baker's bill is, perhaps, unpaid. Here are the slanderings,
too, going on at home; for, while the husbands are assembled, it would be
hard if the wives were not to do the same; and the very least that is to be
expected is, that the tea-pot should keep pace with the porter-pot or grog-
glass. Hence crowds of female acquaintances and intruders, and all the
consequent and inevitable squabbles which form no small part of the
torment of the life of man.
173. If you have servants, they know to a moment the time of your absence;
and they regulate their proceedings accordingly. 'Like master like man,' is
an old and true proverb; and it is natural, if not just, that it should be thus;
for it would be unjust if the careless and neglectful sot were served as
faithfully as the vigilant, attentive and sober man. Late hours, cards and
dice, are amongst the consequences of the master's absence; and why not,
seeing that he is setting the example? Fire, candle, profligate visitants,
expences, losses, children ruined in habits and morals, and, in short, a train
of evils hardly to be enumerated, arise from this most vicious habit of the
master spending his leisure time from home. But beyond all the rest is the
ill-treatment of the wife. When left to ourselves we all seek the company
that we like best; the company in which we take the most delight: and
therefore every husband, be his state of life what it may, who spends his
leisure time, or who, at least, is in the habit of doing it, in company other
than that of his wife and family, tells her and them, as plainly by deeds as
he could possibly do by words, that he takes more delight in other company
than in theirs. Children repay this with disregard for their father; but to a
wife of any sensibility, it is either a dagger to her heart or an incitement to
revenge, and revenge, too, of a species which a young woman will seldom
be long in want of the means to gratify. In conclusion of these remarks

respecting absentee husbands, I would recommend all those who are prone
to, or likely to fall into, the practice, to remember the words of Mrs.
SULLEN, in the BEAUX' STRATAGEM: 'My husband,' says she,
addressing a footman whom she had taken as a paramour, 'comes reeling
home at midnight, tumbles in beside me as a salmon flounces in a net,
oversets the economy of my bed, belches the fumes of his drink in my face,
then twists himself round, leaving me half naked, and listening till morning
to that tuneful nightingale, his nose.' It is at least forty-three years since I
read the BEAUX' STRATAGEM, and I now quote from memory; but the
passage has always occurred to me whenever I have seen a sottish husband;
and though that species of revenge, for the taking of which the lady made
this apology, was carrying the thing too far, yet I am ready to confess, that if
I had to sit in judgment on her for taking even this revenge, my sentence
would be very lenient; for what right has such a husband to expect fidelity?
He has broken his vow; and by what rule of right has she to be bound to
hers? She thought that she was marrying a man; and she finds that she was
married to a beast. He has, indeed, committed no offence that the law of the
land can reach; but he has violated the vow by which he obtained
possession of her person; and, in the eye of justice, the compact between
them is dissolved.
174. The way to avoid the sad consequences of which I have been speaking
is to begin well: many a man has become a sottish husband, and brought a
family to ruin, without being sottishly inclined, and without liking the
gossip of the ale or coffee house. It is by slow degrees that the mischief is
done. He is first inveigled, and, in time, he really likes the thing; and, when
arrived at that point, he is incurable. Let him resolve, from the very first,
never to spend an hour from home, unless business, or, at least, some
necessary and rational purpose demand it. Where ought he to be, but with
the person whom he himself hath chosen to be his partner for life, and the
mother of his children? What other company ought he to deem so good and
so fitting as this? With whom else can he so pleasantly spend his hours of
leisure and relaxation? Besides, if he quit her to seek company more
agreeable, is not she set at large by that act of his? What justice is there in
confining her at home without any company at all, while he rambles forth in
search of company more gay than he finds at home?

175. Let the young married man try the thing; let him resolve not to be
seduced from his home; let him never go, in one single instance,
unnecessarily from his own fire-side. Habit is a powerful thing; and if he
begin right, the pleasure that he will derive from it will induce him to
continue right. This is not being 'tied to the apron-strings,' which means
quite another matter, as I shall show by-and-by. It is being at the husband's
place, whether he have children or not. And is there any want of matter for
conversation between a man and his wife? Why not talk of the daily
occurrences to her, as well as to any body else; and especially to a company
of tippling and noisy men? If you excuse yourself by saying that you go to
read the newspaper, I answer, buy the newspaper, if you must read it: the
cost is not half of what you spend per day at the pot-house; and then you
have it your own, and may read it at your leisure, and your wife can read it
as well as yourself, if read it you must. And, in short, what must that man be
made of, who does not prefer sitting by his own fire-side with his wife and
children, reading to them, or hearing them read, to hearing the gabble and
balderdash of a club or a pot-house company!
176. Men must frequently be from home at all hours of the day and night.
Sailors, soldiers, merchants, all men out of the common track of labour, and
even some in the very lowest walks, are sometimes compelled by their
affairs, or by circumstances, to be from their homes. But what I protest
against is, the habit of spending leisure hours from home, and near to it; and
doing this without any necessity, and by choice: liking the next door, or any
house in the same street, better than your own. When absent from necessity,
there is no wound given to the heart of the wife; she concludes that you
would be with her if you could, and that satisfies; she laments the absence,
but submits to it without complaining. Yet, in these cases, her feelings ought
to be consulted as much as possible; she ought to be fully apprised of the
probable duration of the absence, and of the time of return; and if these be
dependent on circumstances, those circumstances ought to be fully stated;
for you have no right to keep her mind upon the rack, when you have it in
your power to put it in a state of ease. Few men have been more frequently
taken from home by business, or by a necessity of some sort, than I have;
and I can positively assert, that, as to my return, I never once disappointed
my wife in the whole course of our married life. If the time of return was
contingent, I never failed to keep her informed from day to day: if the time

was fixed, or when it became fixed, my arrival was as sure as my life.
Going from London to Botley, once, with Mr. FINNERTY, whose name I
can never pronounce without an expression of my regard for his memory,
we stopped at ALTON, to dine with a friend, who, delighted with Finnerty's
talk, as every body else was, kept us till ten or eleven o'clock, and was
proceeding to the other bottle, when I put in my protest, saying, 'We must
go, my wife will be frightened.' 'Blood, man,' said Finnerty, 'you do not
mean to go home to-night!' I told him I did; and then sent my son, who was
with us, to order out the post-chaise. We had twenty-three miles to go,
during which we debated the question, whether Mrs. COBBETT would be
up to receive us, I contending for the affirmative, and he for the negative.
She was up, and had a nice fire for us to sit down at. She had not committed
the matter to a servant: her servants and children were all in bed; and she
was up, to perform the duty of receiving her husband and his friend. 'You
did not expect him?' said Finnerty. 'To be sure I did,' said she; 'he never
disappointed me in his life.'
177. Now, if all young men knew how much value women set upon this
species of fidelity, there would be fewer unhappy couples than there are. If
men have appointments with lords, they never dream of breaking them; and
I can assure them that wives are as sensitive in this respect as lords. I had
seen many instances of conjugal unhappiness arising out of that
carelessness which left wives in a state of uncertainty as to the movements
of their husbands; and I took care, from the very outset, to guard against it.
For no man has a right to sport with the feelings of any innocent person
whatever, and particularly with those of one who has committed her
happiness to his hands. The truth is, that men in general look upon women
as having no feelings different from their own; and they know that they
themselves would regard such disappointments as nothing. But this is a
great mistake: women feel more acutely than men; their love is more ardent,
more pure, more lasting, and they are more frank and sincere in the
utterance of their feelings. They ought to be treated with due consideration
had for all their amiable qualities and all their weaknesses, and nothing by
which their minds are affected ought to be deemed a trifle.
178. When we consider what a young woman gives up on her wedding day;
she makes a surrender, an absolute surrender, of her liberty, for the joint
lives of the parties; she gives the husband the absolute right of causing her

to live in what place, and in what manner and what society, he pleases; she
gives him the power to take from her, and to use, for his own purposes, all
her goods, unless reserved by some legal instrument; and, above all, she
surrenders to him her person. Then, when we consider the pains which they
endure for us, and the large share of all the anxious parental cares that fall
to their lot; when we consider their devotion to us, and how unshaken their
affection remains in our ailments, even though the most tedious and
disgusting; when we consider the offices that they perform, and cheerfully
perform, for us, when, were we left to one another, we should perish from
neglect; when we consider their devotion to their children, how evidently
they love them better, in numerous instances, than their own lives; when we
consider these things, how can a just man think any thing a trifle that affects
their happiness? I was once going, in my gig, up the hill, in the village of
FRANKFORD, near Philadelphia, when a little girl, about two years old,
who had toddled away from a small house, was lying basking in the sun, in
the middle of the road. About two hundred yards before I got to the child,
the teams, five big horses in each, of three wagons, the drivers of which had
stopped to drink at a tavern on the brow of the hill, started off, and came,
nearly abreast, galloping down the road. I got my gig off the road as
speedily as I could; but expected to see the poor child crushed to pieces. A
young man, a journeyman carpenter, who was shingling a shed by the side
of the road, seeing the child, and seeing the danger, though a stranger to the
parents, jumped from the top of the shed, ran into the road, and snatched up
the child, from scarcely an inch before the hoof of the leading horse. The
horse's leg knocked him down; but he, catching the child by its clothes,
flung it back, out of the way of the other horses, and saved himself by
rolling back with surprising agility. The mother of the child, who had,
apparently, been washing, seeing the teams coming, and seeing the situation
of the child, rushed out, and catching up the child, just as the carpenter had
flung it back, and hugging it in her arms, uttered a shriek such as I never
heard before, never heard since, and, I hope, shall never hear again; and
then she dropped down, as if perfectly dead! By the application of the usual
means, she was restored, however, in a little while; and I, being about to
depart, asked the carpenter if he were a married man, and whether he were a
relation of the parents of the child. He said he was neither: 'Well, then,' said
I, 'you merit the gratitude of every father and mother in the world, and I will
show mine, by giving you what I have,' pulling out the nine or ten dollars

that I had in my pocket. 'No; I thank you, Sir,' said he: 'I have only done
what it was my duty to do.'
179. Bravery, disinterestedness, and maternal affection surpassing these, it
is impossible to imagine. The mother was going right in amongst the feet of
these powerful and wild horses, and amongst the wheels of the wagons. She
had no thought for herself; no feeling of fear for her own life; her shriek
was the sound of inexpressible joy; joy too great for her to support herself
under. Perhaps ninety-nine mothers out of every hundred would have acted
the same part, under similar circumstances. There are, comparatively, very
few women not replete with maternal love; and, by-the-by, take you care, if
you meet with a girl who 'is not fond of children,' not to marry her by any
means. Some few there are who even make a boast that they 'cannot bear
children,' that is, cannot endure them. I never knew a man that was good for
much who had a dislike to little children; and I never knew a woman of that
taste who was good for any thing at all. I have seen a few such in the course
of my life, and I have never wished to see one of them a second time.
180. Being fond of little children argues no effeminacy in a man, but, as far
as my observation has gone, the contrary. A regiment of soldiers presents no
bad school wherein to study character. Soldiers have leisure, too, to play
with children, as well as with 'women and dogs,' for which the proverb has
made them famed. And I have never observed that effeminacy was at all the
marked companion of fondness for little children. This fondness manifestly
arises from a compassionate feeling towards creatures that are helpless, and
that must be innocent. For my own part, how many days, how many
months, all put together, have I spent with babies in my arms! My time,
when at home, and when babies were going on, was chiefly divided
between the pen and the baby. I have fed them and put them to sleep
hundreds of times, though there were servants to whom the task might have
been transferred. Yet, I have not been effeminate; I have not been idle; I
have not been a waster of time; but I should have been all these if I had
disliked babies, and had liked the porter pot and the grog glass.
181. It is an old saying, 'Praise the child, and you make love to the mother;'
and it is surprising how far this will go. To a fond mother you can do
nothing so pleasing as to praise the baby, and, the younger it is, the more
she values the compliment. Say fine things to her, and take no notice of her

baby, and she will despise you. I have often beheld this, in many women,
with great admiration; and it is a thing that no husband ought to overlook;
for if the wife wish her child to be admired by others, what must be the
ardour of her wishes with regard to his admiration. There was a drunken
dog of a Norfolk man in our regiment, who came from Thetford, I recollect,
who used to say, that his wife would forgive him for spending all the pay,
and the washing money into the bargain, 'if he would but kiss her ugly brat,
and say it was pretty.' Now, though this was a very profligate fellow, he had
philosophy in him; and certain it is, that there is nothing worthy of the name
of conjugal happiness, unless the husband clearly evince that he is fond of
his children, and that, too, from their very birth.
182. But though all the aforementioned considerations demand from us the
kindest possible treatment of a wife, the husband is to expect dutiful
deportment at her hands. He is not to be her slave; he is not to yield to her
against the dictates of his own reason and judgment; it is her duty to obey
all his lawful commands; and, if she have sense, she will perceive that it is a
disgrace to herself to acknowledge, as a husband, a thing over which she
has an absolute controul. It should always be recollected that you are the
party whose body must, if any do, lie in jail for debt, and for debts of her
contracting, too, as well as of your own contracting. Over her tongue, too,
you possess a clear right to exercise, if necessary, some controul; for if she
use it in an unjustifiable manner, it is against you, and not against her, that
the law enables, and justly enables, the slandered party to proceed; which
would be monstrously unjust, if the law were not founded on the right
which the husband has to control, if necessary, the tongue of the wife, to
compel her to keep it within the limits prescribed by the law. A charming, a
most enchanting, life, indeed, would be that of a husband, if he were bound
to cohabit with and to maintain one for all the debts and all the slanders of
whom he was answerable, and over whose conduct he possessed no
compulsory controul.
183. Of the remedies in the case of really bad wives, squanderers,
drunkards, adultresses, I shall speak further on; it being the habit of us all to
put off to the last possible moment the performance of disagreeable duties.
But, far short of these vices, there are several faults in a wife that may, if
not cured in time, lead to great unhappiness, great injury to the interests as
well as character of her husband and children; and which faults it is,

therefore, the husband's duty to correct. A wife may be chaste, sober in the
full sense of the word, industrious, cleanly, frugal, and may be devoted to
her husband and her children to a degree so enchanting as to make them all
love her beyond the power of words to express. And yet she may, partly
under the influence of her natural disposition, and partly encouraged by the
great and constant homage paid to her virtues, and presuming, too, on the
pain with which she knows her will would be thwarted; she may, with all
her virtues, be thus led to a bold interference in the affairs of her husband;
may attempt to dictate to him in matters quite out of her own sphere; and, in
the pursuit of the gratification of her love of power and command, may
wholly overlook the acts of folly or injustice which she would induce her
husband to commit, and overlook, too, the contemptible thing that she is
making the man whom it is her duty to honour and obey, and the abasement
of whom cannot take place without some portion of degradation falling
upon herself. At the time when 'THE BOOK' came out, relative to the late
ill-treated QUEEN CAROLINE, I was talking upon the subject, one day,
with a parson, who had not read the Book, but who, as was the fashion with
all those who were looking up to the government, condemned the Queen
unheard. 'Now,' said I, 'be not so shamefully unjust; but get the book, read
it, and then give your judgment.'—'Indeed,' said his wife, who was sitting
by, 'but HE SHA'N'T,' pronouncing the words sha'n't with an emphasis and
a voice tremendously masculine. 'Oh!' said I, 'if he SHA'N'T, that is another
matter; but, if he sha'n't read, if he sha'n't hear the evidence, he sha'n't be
looked upon, by me, as a just judge; and I sha'n't regard him, in future, as
having any opinion of his own in any thing.' All which the husband, the
poor henpecked thing, heard without a word escaping his lips.
184. A husband thus under command, is the most contemptible of God's
creatures. Nobody can place reliance on him for any thing; whether in the
capacity of employer or employed, you are never sure of him. No bargain is
firm, no engagement sacred, with such a man. Feeble as a reed before the
boisterous she-commander, he is bold in injustice towards those whom it
pleases her caprice to mark out for vengeance. In the eyes of neighbours,
for friends such a man cannot have, in the eyes of servants, in the eyes of
even the beggars at his door, such a man is a mean and despicable creature,
though he may roll in wealth and possess great talents into the bargain.
Such a man has, in fact, no property; he has nothing that he can rightly call

his own; he is a beggarly dependent under his own roof; and if he have any
thing of the man left in him, and if there be rope or river near, the sooner he
betakes him to the one or the other the better. How many men, how many
families, have I known brought to utter ruin only by the husband suffering
himself to be subdued, to be cowed down, to be held in fear, of even a
virtuous wife! What, then, must be the lot of him who submits to a
commander who, at the same time, sets all virtue at defiance!
185. Women are a sisterhood. They make common cause in behalf of the
sex; and, indeed, this is natural enough, when we consider the vast power
that the law gives us over them. The law is for us, and they combine,
wherever they can, to mitigate its effects. This is perfectly natural, and, to a
certain extent, laudable, evincing fellow-feeling and public spirit: but when
carried to the length of 'he sha'n't,' it is despotism on the one side and
slavery on the other. Watch, therefore, the incipient steps of encroachment;
and they come on so slowly, so softly, that you must be sharp-sighted if you
perceive them; but the moment you do perceive them: your love will blind
for too long a time; but the moment you do perceive them, put at once an
effectual stop to their progress. Never mind the pain that it may give you: a
day of pain at this time will spare you years of pain in time to come. Many
a man has been miserable, and made his wife miserable too, for a score or
two of years, only for want of resolution to bear one day of pain: and it is a
great deal to bear; it is a great deal to do to thwart the desire of one whom
you so dearly love, and whose virtues daily render her more and more dear
to you. But (and this is one of the most admirable of the mother's traits) as
she herself will, while the tears stream from her eyes, force the nauseous
medicine down the throat of her child, whose every cry is a dagger to her
heart; as she herself has the courage to do this for the sake of her child, why
should you flinch from the performance of a still more important and more
sacred duty towards herself, as well as towards you and your children?
186. Am I recommending tyranny? Am I recommending disregard of the
wife's opinions and wishes? Am I recommending a reserve towards her that
would seem to say that she was not trust-worthy, or not a party interested in
her husband's affairs? By no means: on the contrary, though I would keep
any thing disagreeable from her, I should not enjoy the prospect of good
without making her a participator. But reason says, and God has said, that it
is the duty of wives to be obedient to their husbands; and the very nature of

things prescribes that there must be a head of every house, and an
undivided authority. And then it is so clearly just that the authority should
rest with him on whose head rests the whole responsibility, that a woman,
when patiently reasoned with on the subject, must be a virago in her very
nature not to submit with docility to the terms of her marriage vow.
187. There are, in almost every considerable neighbourhood, a little
squadron of she-commanders, generally the youngish wives of old or weak-
minded men, and generally without children. These are the tutoresses of the
young wives of the vicinage; they, in virtue of their experience, not only
school the wives, but scold the husbands; they teach the former how to
encroach and the latter how to yield: so that if you suffer this to go quietly
on, you are soon under the care of a comité as completely as if you were
insane. You want no comité: reason, law, religion, the marriage vow; all
these have made you head, have given you full power to rule your family,
and if you give up your right, you deserve the contempt that assuredly
awaits you, and also the ruin that is, in all probability, your doom.
188. Taking it for granted that you will not suffer more than a second or
third session of the female comité, let me say a word or two about the
conduct of men in deciding between the conflicting opinions of husbands
and wives. When a wife has a point to carry, and finds herself hard pushed,
or when she thinks it necessary to call to her aid all the force she can
possibly muster, one of her resources is, the vote on her side of all her
husband's visiting friends. 'My husband thinks so and so, and I think so and
so; now, Mr. Tomkins, don't you think I am right?' To be sure he does; and
so does Mr. Jenkins, and so does Wilkins, and so does Mr. Dickins, and you
would swear that they were all her kins. Now this is very foolish, to say the
least of it. None of these complaisant kins would like this in their own case.
It is the fashion to say aye to all that a woman asserts, or contends for,
especially in contradiction to her husband; and a very pernicious fashion it
is. It is, in fact, not to pay her a compliment worthy of acceptance, but to
treat her as an empty and conceited fool; and no sensible woman will,
except from mere inadvertence, make the appeal. This fashion, however,
foolish and contemptible as it is in itself, is attended, very frequently, with
serious consequences. Backed by the opinions of her husband's friends, the
wife returns to the charge with redoubled vigour and obstinacy; and if you
do not yield, ten to one but a quarrel is the result; or, at least, something

approaching towards it. A gentleman at whose house I was, about five years
ago, was about to take a farm for his eldest son, who was a very fine young
man, about eighteen years old. The mother, who was as virtuous and as
sensible a woman as I have ever known, wished him to be 'in the law.' There
were six or eight intimate friends present, and all unhesitatingly joined the
lady, thinking it a pity that HARRY, who had had 'such a good education,'
should be buried in a farm-house. 'And don't you think so too, Mr. Cobbett,'
said the lady, with great earnestness. 'Indeed, Ma'am,' said I, 'I should think
it very great presumption in me to offer any opinion at all, and especially in
opposition to the known decision of the father, who is the best judge, and
the only rightful judge, in such a case.' This was a very sensible and well-
behaved woman, and I still respect her very highly; but I could perceive that
I instantly dropped out of her good graces. Harry, however, I was glad to
hear, went 'to be buried in the farm-house.'
189. 'A house divided against itself,' or, rather, in itself, 'cannot stand;' and it
is divided against itself if there be a divided authority. The wife ought to be
heard, and patiently heard; she ought to be reasoned with, and, if possible,
convinced; but if, after all endeavours in this way, she remain opposed to
the husband's opinion, his will must be obeyed; or he, at once, becomes
nothing; she is, in fact, the master, and he is nothing but an insignificant
inmate. As to matters of little comparative moment; as to what shall be for
dinner; as to how the house shall be furnished; as to the management of the
house and of menial servants; as to these matters, and many others, the wife
may have her way without any danger; but when the questions are, what is
to be the calling to be pursued; what is to be the place of residence; what is
to be the style of living and scale of expence; what is to be done with
property; what the manner and place of educating children; what is to be
their calling or state of life; who are to be employed or entrusted by the
husband; what are the principles that he is to adopt as to public matters;
whom he is to have for coadjutors or friends; all these must be left solely to
the husband; in all these he must have his will; or there never can be any
harmony in the family.
190. Nevertheless, in some of these concerns, wives should be heard with a
great deal of attention, especially in the affairs of choosing your male
acquaintances and friends and associates. Women are more quick-sighted
than men; they are less disposed to confide in persons upon a first

acquaintance; they are more suspicious as to motives; they are less liable to
be deceived by professions and protestations; they watch words with a more
scrutinizing ear, and looks with a keener eye; and, making due allowance
for their prejudices in particular cases, their opinions and remonstrances,
with regard to matters of this sort, ought not to be set at naught without
great deliberation. LOUVET, one of the Brissotins, who fled for their lives
in the time of ROBESPIERRE; this LOUVET, in his narrative, entitled 'Mes
Perils' and which I read, for the first time, to divert my mind from the perils
of the yellow-fever, in Philadelphia, but with which I was so captivated as
to have read it many times since; this writer, giving an account of his
wonderful dangers and escapes, relates, that being on his way to Paris from
the vicinity of Bordeaux, and having no regular passport, fell lame, but
finally crept on to a miserable pot-house, in a small town in the Limosin.
The landlord questioned him with regard to who and what he was and
whence he came and was satisfied with his answers. But the landlady, who
had looked sharply at him on his arrival, whispered a little boy, who ran
away, and quickly returned with the mayor of the town. LOUVET soon
discovered that there was no danger in the mayor, who could not decipher
his forged passport, and who, being well plied with wine, wanted to hear no
more of the matter. The landlady, perceiving this, slipped out and brought a
couple of aldermen, who asked to see the passport. 'O, yes; but drink first.'
Then there was a laughing story to tell over again, at the request of the half-
drunken mayor; then a laughing and more drinking; the passport in
LOUVET'S hand, but never opened, and, while another toast was drinking,
the passport slid back quietly into the pocket; the woman looking furious all
the while. At last, the mayor, the aldermen, and the landlord, all nearly
drunk, shook hands with LOUVET, and wished him a good journey, swore
he was a true sans culotte; but, he says, that the 'sharp-sighted woman, who
was to be deceived by none of his stories or professions, saw him get off
with deep and manifest disappointment and chagrin.' I have thought of this
many times since, when I have had occasion to witness the quick-
sightedness and penetration of women. The same quality that makes them,
as they notoriously are, more quick in discovering expedients in cases of
difficulty, makes them more apt to penetrate into motives and character.
191. I now come to a matter of the greatest possible importance; namely,
that great troubler of the married state, that great bane of families,

JEALOUSY; and I shall first speak of jealousy in the wife. This is always an
unfortunate thing, and sometimes fatal. Yet, if there be a great propensity
towards it, it is very difficult to be prevented. One thing, however, every
husband can do in the way of prevention; and that is, to give no ground for
it. And here, it is not sufficient that he strictly adhere to his marriage vow;
he ought further to abstain from every art, however free from guilt,
calculated to awaken the slightest degree of suspicion in a mind, the peace
of which he is bound by every tie of justice and humanity not to disturb, or,
if he can avoid it, to suffer it to be disturbed by others. A woman that is very
fond of her husband, and this is the case with nine-tenths of English and
American women, does not like to share with another any, even the smallest
portion, not only of his affection, but of his assiduities and applause; and, as
the bestowing of them on another, and receiving payment in kind, can serve
no purpose other than of gratifying one's vanity, they ought to be abstained
from, and especially if the gratification be to be purchased with even the
chance of exciting uneasiness in her, whom it is your sacred duty to make as
happy as you can.
192. For about two or three years after I was married, I, retaining some of
my military manners, used, both in France and America, to romp most
famously with the girls that came in my way; till one day, at Philadelphia,
my wife said to me, in a very gentle manner, 'Don't do that: I do not like it.'
That was quite enough: I had never thought on the subject before: one hair
of her head was more dear to me than all the other women in the world, and
this I knew that she knew; but I now saw that this was not all that she had a
right to from me; I saw, that she had the further claim upon me that I should
abstain from every thing that might induce others to believe that there was
any other woman for whom, even if I were at liberty, I had any affection. I
beseech young married men to bear this in mind; for, on some trifle of this
sort, the happiness or misery of a long life frequently turns. If the mind of a
wife be disturbed on this score, every possible means ought to be used to
restore it to peace; and though her suspicions be perfectly groundless;
though they be wild as the dreams of madmen; though they may present a
mixture of the furious and the ridiculous, still they are to be treated with the
greatest lenity and tenderness; and if, after all, you fail, the frailty is to be
lamented as a misfortune, and not punished as a fault, seeing that it must
have its foundation in a feeling towards you, which it would be the basest of

ingratitude, and the most ferocious of cruelty, to repay by harshness of any
description.
193. As to those husbands who make the unjust suspicions of their wives a
justification for making those suspicions just; as to such as can make a sport
of such suspicions, rather brag of them than otherwise, and endeavour to
aggravate rather than assuage them; as to such I have nothing to say, they
being far without the scope of any advice that I can offer. But to such as are
not of this description, I have a remark or two to offer with respect to
measures of prevention.
194. And, first, I never could see the sense of its being a piece of etiquette, a
sort of mark of good breeding, to make it a rule that man and wife are not to
sit side by side in a mixed company; that if a party walk out, the wife is to
give her arm to some other than her husband; that if there be any other hand
near, his is not to help to a seat or into a carriage. I never could see the
sense of this; but I have always seen the nonsense of it plainly enough; it is,
in short, amongst many other foolish and mischievous things that we do in
aping the manners of those whose riches (frequently ill-gotten) and whose
power embolden them to set, with impunity, pernicious examples; and to
their examples this nation owes more of its degradation in morals than to
any other source. The truth is, that this is a piece of false refinement: it,
being interpreted, means, that so free are the parties from a liability to
suspicion, so innately virtuous and pure are they, that each man can safely
trust his wife with another man, and each woman her husband with another
woman. But this piece of false refinement, like all others, overshoots its
mark; it says too much; for it says that the parties have lewd thoughts in
their minds. This is not the fact, with regard to people in general; but it must
have been the origin of this set of consummately ridiculous and
contemptible rules.
195. Now I would advise a young man, especially if he have a pretty wife,
not to commit her unnecessarily to the care of any other man; not to be
separated from her in this studious and ceremonious manner; and not to be
ashamed to prefer her company and conversation to that of any other
woman. I never could discover any good-breeding in setting another man,
almost expressly, to poke his nose up in the face of my wife, and talk
nonsense to her; for, in such cases, nonsense it generally is. It is not a thing

of much consequence, to be sure; but when the wife is young, especially, it
is not seemly, at any rate, and it cannot possibly lead to any good, though it
may not lead to any great evil. And, on the other hand, you may be quite
sure that, whatever she may seem to think of the matter, she will not like
you the better for your attentions of this sort to other women, especially if
they be young and handsome: and as this species of fashionable nonsense
can do you no good, why gratify your love of talk, or the vanity of any
woman, at even the risk of exciting uneasiness in that mind of which it is
your most sacred duty to preserve, if you can, the uninterrupted tranquillity.
196. The truth is, that the greatest security of all against jealousy in a wife is
to show, to prove, by your acts, by your words also, but more especially by
your acts, that you prefer her to all the world; and, as I said before, I know
of no act that is, in this respect, equal to spending in her company every
moment of your leisure time. Every body knows, and young wives better
than any body else, that people, who can choose, will be where they like
best to be, and that they will be along with those whose company they best
like. The matter is very plain, then, and I do beseech you to bear it in mind.
Nor do I see the use, or sense, of keeping a great deal of company, as it is
called. What company can a young man and woman want more than their
two selves, and their children, if they have any? If here be not company
enough, it is but a sad affair. The pernicious cards are brought forth by the
company-keeping, the rival expenses, the sittings up late at night, the seeing
of 'the ladies home,' and a thousand squabbles and disagreeable
consequences. But, the great thing of all is, that this hankering after
company, proves, clearly proves, that you want something beyond the
society of your wife; and that she is sure to feel most acutely: the bare fact
contains an imputation against her, and it is pretty sure to lay the foundation
of jealousy, or of something still worse.
197. If acts of kindness in you are necessary in all cases, they are especially
so in cases of her illness, from whatever cause arising. I will not suppose
myself to be addressing any husband capable of being unconcerned while
his wife's life is in the most distant danger from illness, though it has been
my very great mortification to know in my life time, two or three brutes of
this description; but, far short of this degree of brutality, a great deal of fault
may be committed. When men are ill, they feel every neglect with double
anguish, and, what then must be in such cases the feelings of women,

whose ordinary feelings are so much more acute than those of men; what
must be their feelings in case of neglect in illness, and especially if the
neglect come from the husband! Your own heart will, I hope, tell you what
those feelings must be, and will spare me the vain attempt to describe them;
and, if it do thus instruct you, you will want no arguments from me to
induce you, at such a season, to prove the sincerity of your affection by
every kind word and kind act that your mind can suggest. This is the time to
try you; and, be you assured, that the impression left on her mind now will
be the true and lasting impression; and, if it be good, will be a better
preservative against her being jealous, than ten thousand of your
professions ten thousand times repeated. In such a case, you ought to spare
no expense that you can possibly afford; you ought to neglect nothing that
your means will enable you to do; for, what is the use of money if it be not
to be expended in this case? But, more than all the rest, is your own
personal attention. This is the valuable thing; this is the great balm to the
sufferer, and, it is efficacious in proportion as it is proved to be sincere.
Leave nothing to other hands that you can do yourself; the mind has a great
deal to do in all the ailments of the body, and, bear in mind, that, whatever
be the event, you have a more than ample reward. I cannot press this point
too strongly upon you; the bed of sickness presents no charms, no
allurements, and women know this well; they watch, in such a case, your
every word and every look: and now it is that their confidence is secured, or
their suspicions excited, for life.
198. In conclusion of these remarks, as to jealousy in a wife, I cannot help
expressing my abhorrence of those husbands who treat it as a matter for
ridicule. To be sure, infidelity in a man is less heinous than infidelity in the
wife; but still, is the marriage vow nothing? Is a promise solemnly made
before God, and in the face of the world, nothing? Is a violation of a
contract, and that, too, with a feebler party, nothing of which a man ought to
be ashamed? But, besides all these, there is the cruelty. First, you win, by
great pains, perhaps, a woman's affections; then, in order to get possession
of her person, you marry her; then, after enjoyment, you break your vow,
you bring upon her the mixed pity and jeers of the world, and thus you
leave her to weep out her life. Murder is more horrible than this, to be sure,
and the criminal law, which punishes divers other crimes, does not reach
this; but, in the eye of reason and of moral justice, it is surpassed by very

few of those crimes. Passion may be pleaded, and so it may, for almost
every other crime of which man can be guilty. It is not a crime against
nature; nor are any of these which men commit in consequence of their
necessities. The temptation is great; and is not the temptation great when
men thieve or rob? In short, there is no excuse for an act so unjust and so
cruel, and the world is just as to this matter; for, I have always observed,
that, however men are disposed to laugh at these breaches of vows in men,
the act seldom fails to produce injury to the whole character; it leaves, after
all the joking, a stain, and, amongst those who depend on character for a
livelihood, it often produces ruin. At the very least, it makes an unhappy
and wrangling family; it makes children despise or hate their fathers, and it
affords an example at the thought of the ultimate consequences of which a
father ought to shudder. In such a case, children will take part, and they
ought to take part, with the mother: she is the injured party; the shame
brought upon her attaches, in part, to them: they feel the injustice done
them; and, if such a man, when the grey hairs, and tottering knees, and
piping voice come, look round him in vain for a prop, let him, at last, be
just, and acknowledge that he has now the due reward of his own wanton
cruelty to one whom he had solemnly sworn to love and to cherish to the
last hour of his or her life.
199. But, bad as is conjugal infidelity in the husband, it is much worse in
the wife: a proposition that it is necessary to maintain by the force of reason,
because the women, as a sisterhood, are prone to deny the truth of it. They
say that adultery is adultery, in men as well as in them; and that, therefore,
the offence is as great in the one case as in the other. As a crime,
abstractedly considered, it certainly is; but, as to the consequences, there is
a wide difference. In both cases, there is the breach of a solemn vow, but,
there is this great distinction, that the husband, by his breach of that vow,
only brings shame upon his wife and family; whereas the wife, by a breach
of her vow, may bring the husband a spurious offspring to maintain, and
may bring that spurious offspring to rob of their fortunes, and in some cases
of their bread, her legitimate children. So that here is a great and evident
wrong done to numerous parties, besides the deeper disgrace inflicted in
this case than in the other.
200. And why is the disgrace deeper? Because here is a total want of
delicacy; here is, in fact, prostitution; here is grossness and filthiness of

mind; here is every thing that argues baseness of character. Women should
be, and they are, except in few instances, far more reserved and more
delicate than men; nature bids them be such; the habits and manners of the
world confirm this precept of nature; and therefore, when they commit this
offence, they excite loathing, as well as call for reprobation. In the countries
where a plurality of wives is permitted, there is no plurality of husbands. It
is there thought not at all indelicate for a man to have several wives; but the
bare thought of a woman having two husbands would excite horror. The
widows of the Hindoos burn themselves in the pile that consumes their
husbands; but the Hindoo widowers do not dispose of themselves in this
way. The widows devote their bodies to complete destruction, lest, even
after the death of their husbands, they should be tempted to connect
themselves with other men; and though this is carrying delicacy far indeed,
it reads to Christian wives a lesson not unworthy of their attention; for,
though it is not desirable that their bodies should be turned into handfuls of
ashes, even that transmutation were preferable to that infidelity which fixes
the brand of shame on the cheeks of their parents, their children, and on
those of all who ever called them friend.
201. For these plain and forcible reasons it is that this species of offence is
far more heinous in the wife than in the husband; and the people of all
civilized countries act upon this settled distinction. Men who have been
guilty of the offence are not cut off from society, but women who have been
guilty of it are; for, as we all know well, no woman, married or single, of
fair reputation, will risk that reputation by being ever seen, if she can avoid
it, with a woman who has ever, at any time, committed this offence, which
contains in itself, and by universal award, a sentence of social
excommunication for life.
202. If, therefore, it be the duty of the husband to adhere strictly to his
marriage vow: if his breach of that vow be naturally attended with the fatal
consequences above described: how much more imperative is the duty on
the wife to avoid, even the semblance of a deviation from that vow! If the
man's misconduct, in this respect, bring shame on so many innocent parties,
what shame, what dishonour, what misery follow such misconduct in the
wife! Her parents, those of her husband, all her relations, and all her friends,
share in her dishonour. And her children! how is she to make atonement to
them! They are commanded to honour their father and their mother; but not

such a mother as this, who, on the contrary, has no claim to any thing from
them but hatred, abhorrence, and execration. It is she who has broken the
ties of nature; she has dishonoured her own offspring; she has fixed a mark
of reproach on those who once made a part of her own body; nature shuts
her out of the pale of its influence, and condemns her to the just detestation
of those whom it formerly bade love her as their own life.
203. But as the crime is so much more heinous, and the punishment so
much more severe, in the case of the wife than it is in the case of the
husband, so the caution ought to be greater in making the accusation, or
entertaining the suspicion. Men ought to be very slow in entertaining such
suspicions: they ought to have clear proof before they can suspect; a
proneness to such suspicions is a very unfortunate turn of the mind; and,
indeed, few characters are more despicable than that of a jealous-headed
husband; rather than be tied to the whims of one of whom, an innocent
woman of spirit would earn her bread over the washing-tub, or with a hay-
fork, or a reap-hook. With such a man there can be no peace; and, as far as
children are concerned, the false accusation is nearly equal to the reality.
When a wife discovers her jealousy, she merely imputes to her husband
inconstancy and breach of his marriage vow; but jealousy in him imputes to
her a willingness to palm a spurious offspring upon him, and upon her
legitimate children, as robbers of their birthright; and, besides this,
grossness, filthiness, and prostitution. She imputes to him injustice and
cruelty: but he imputes to her that which banishes her from society; that
which cuts her off for life from every thing connected with female purity;
that which brands her with infamy to her latest breath.
204. Very slow, therefore, ought a husband to be in entertaining even the
thought of this crime in his wife. He ought to be quite sure before he take
the smallest step in the way of accusation; but if unhappily he have the
proof, no consideration on earth ought to induce him to cohabit with her
one moment longer. Jealous husbands are not despicable because they have
grounds; but because they have not grounds; and this is generally the case.
When they have grounds, their own honour commands them to cast off the
object, as they would cut out a corn or a cancer. It is not the jealousy in
itself, which is despicable; but the continuing to live in that state. It is no
dishonour to be a slave in Algiers, for instance; the dishonour begins only
where you remain a slave voluntarily; it begins the moment you can escape

from slavery, and do not. It is despicable unjustly to be jealous of your wife;
but it is infamy to cohabit with her if you know her to be guilty.
205. I shall be told that the law compels you to live with her, unless you be
rich enough to disengage yourself from her; but the law does not compel
you to remain in the same country with her; and, if a man have no other
means of ridding himself of such a curse, what are mountains or seas or
traverse? And what is the risk (if such there be) of exchanging a life of
bodily ease for a life of labour? What are these, and numerous other ills (if
they happen) superadded? Nay, what is death itself, compared with the
baseness, the infamy, the never-ceasing shame and reproach of living under
the same roof with a prostituted woman, and calling her your wife? But,
there are children, and what are to become of these? To be taken away from
the prostitute, to be sure; and this is a duty which you owe to them: the
sooner they forget her the better, and the farther they are from her, the
sooner that will be. There is no excuse for continuing to live with an
adultress; no inconvenience, no loss, no suffering, ought to deter a man
from delivering himself from such a state of filthy infamy; and to suffer his
children to remain in such a state, is a crime that hardly admits of adequate
description; a jail is paradise compared with such a life, and he who can
endure this latter, from the fear of encountering hardship, is a wretch too
despicable to go by the name of man.
206. But, now, all this supposes, that the husband has well and truly acted
his part! It supposes, not only that he has been faithful; but, that he has not,
in any way, been the cause of temptation to the wife to be unfaithful. If he
have been cold and neglectful; if he have led a life of irregularity; if he have
proved to her that home was not his delight; if he have made his house the
place of resort for loose companions; if he have given rise to a taste for
visiting, junketting, parties of pleasure and gaiety; if he have introduced the
habit of indulging in what are called 'innocent freedoms;' if these, or any of
these, the fault is his, he must take the consequences, and he has no right to
inflict punishment on the offender, the offence being in fact of his own
creating. The laws of God, as well as the laws of man, have given him all
power in this respect: it is for him to use that power for the honour of his
wife as well as for that of himself: if he neglect to use it, all the
consequences ought to fall on him; and, as far as my observation has gone,
in nineteen out of twenty cases of infidelity in wives, the crimes have been

fairly ascribable to the husbands. Folly or misconduct in the husband,
cannot, indeed, justify or even palliate infidelity in the wife, whose very
nature ought to make her recoil at the thought of the offence; but it may, at
the same time, deprive him of the right of inflicting punishment on her: her
kindred, her children, and the world, will justly hold her in abhorrence; but
the husband must hold his peace.
207. 'Innocent freedoms!' I know of none that a wife can indulge in. The
words, as applied to the demeanour of a married woman, or even a single
one, imply a contradiction. For freedom, thus used, means an exemption or
departure from the strict rules of female reserve; and, I do not see how this
can be innocent. It may not amount to crime, indeed; but, still it is not
innocent; and the use of the phrase is dangerous. If it had been my fortune
to be yoked to a person, who liked 'innocent freedoms,' I should have
unyoked myself in a very short time. But, to say the truth, it is all a man's
own fault. If he have not sense and influence enough to prevent 'innocent
freedoms,' even before marriage, he will do well to let the thing alone, and
leave wives to be managed by those who have. But, men will talk to your
wife, and natter her. To be sure they will, if she be young and pretty; and
would you go and pull her away from them? O no, by no means; but you
must have very little sense, or must have made very little use of it, if her
manner do not soon convince them that they employ their flattery in vain.
208. So much of a man's happiness and of his efficiency through life
depends upon his mind being quite free from all anxieties of this sort, that
too much care cannot be taken to guard against them; and, I repeat, that the
great preservation of all is, the young couple living as much as possible at
home, and having as few visitors as possible. If they do not prefer the
company of each other to that of all the world besides; if either of them be
weary of the company of the other; if they do not, when separated by
business or any other cause, think with pleasure of the time of meeting
again, it is a bad omen. Pursue this course when young, and the very
thought of jealousy will never come into your mind; and, if you do pursue
it, and show by your deeds that you value your wife as you do your own
life, you must be pretty nearly an idiot, if she do not think you to be the
wisest man in the world. The best man she will be sure to think you, and she
will never forgive any one that calls your talents or your wisdom in
question.

209. Now, will you say that, if to be happy, nay, if to avoid misery and ruin
in the married state, requires all these precautions, all these cares, to fail to
any extent in any of which is to bring down on a man's head such fearful
consequences; will you say that, if this be the case, it is better to remain
single? If you should say this, it is my business to show that you are in
error. For, in the first place, it is against nature to suppose that children can
cease to be born; they must and will come; and then it follows, that they
must come by promiscuous intercourse, or by particular connexion. The
former nobody will contend for, seeing that it would put us, in this respect,
on a level with the brute creation. Then, as the connexion is to be
particular, it must be during pleasure, or for the joint lives of the parties.
The former would seldom hold for any length of time: the tie would seldom
be durable, and it would be feeble on account of its uncertain duration.
Therefore, to be a father, with all the lasting and delightful ties attached to
the name, you must first be a husband; and there are very few men in the
world who do not, first or last, desire to be fathers. If it be said, that
marriage ought not to be for life, but that its duration ought to be subject to
the will, the mutual will at least, of the parties; the answer is, that it would
seldom be of long duration. Every trifling dispute would lead to a
separation; a hasty word would be enough. Knowing that the engagement is
for life, prevents disputes too; it checks anger in its beginnings. Put a
rigging horse into a field with a weak fence, and with captivating pasture on
the other side, and he is continually trying to get out; but, let the field be
walled round, he makes the best of his hard fare, and divides his time
between grazing and sleeping. Besides, there could be no families, no
assemblages of persons worthy of that name; all would be confusion and
indescribable intermixture: the names of brother and sister would hardly
have a meaning; and, therefore, there must be marriage, or there can be
nothing worthy of the name of family or of father.
210. The cares and troubles of the married life are many; but, are those of
the single life few? Take the farmer, and it is nearly the same with the
tradesman; but, take the farmer, for instance, and let him, at the age of
twenty-five, go into business unmarried. See his maid servants, probably
rivals for his smiles, but certainly rivals in the charitable distribution of his
victuals and drink amongst those of their own rank: behold their
guardianship of his pork-tub, his bacon rack, his butter, cheese, milk,

poultry, eggs, and all the rest of it: look at their care of all his household
stuff, his blankets, sheets, pillow-cases, towels, knives and forks, and
particularly of his crockery ware, of which last they will hardly exceed a
single cart-load of broken bits in the year. And, how nicely they will get up
and take care of his linen and other wearing apparel, and always have it
ready for him without his thinking about it! If absent at market, or
especially at a distant fair, how scrupulously they will keep all their cronies
out of his house, and what special care they will take of his cellar, more
particularly that which holds the strong beer! And his groceries and his
spirits and his wine (for a bachelor can afford it), how safe these will all be!
Bachelors have not, indeed, any more than married men, a security for
health; but if our young farmer be sick, there are his couple of maids to take
care of him, to administer his medicine, and to perform for him all other
nameless offices, which in such a case are required; and what is more, take
care of every thing down stairs at the same time, especially his desk with
the money in it! Never will they, good-humoured girls as they are, scold
him for coming home too late; but, on the contrary, like him the better for it;
and if he have drunk a little too much, so much the better, for then he will
sleep late in the morning, and when he comes out at last, he will find that
his men have been so hard at work, and that all his animals have been taken
such good care of!
211. Nonsense! a bare glance at the thing shows, that a farmer, above all
men living, can never carry on his affairs with profit without a wife, or a
mother, or a daughter, or some such person; and mother and daughter imply
matrimony. To be sure, a wife would cause some trouble, perhaps, to this
young man. There might be the midwife and nurse to gallop after at
midnight; there might be, and there ought to be, if called for, a little
complaining of late hours; but, good God! what are these, and all the other
troubles that could attend a married life; what are they, compared to the one
single circumstance of the want of a wife at your bedside during one single
night of illness! A nurse! what is a nurse to do for you? Will she do the
things that a wife will do? Will she watch your looks and your half-uttered
wishes? Will she use the urgent persuasions so often necessary to save life
in such cases? Will she, by her acts, convince you that it is not a toil, but a
delight, to break her rest for your sake? In short, now it is that you find that

what the women themselves say is strictly true, namely, that without wives,
men are poor helpless mortals.
212. As to the expense, there is no comparison between that of a woman
servant and a wife, in the house of a farmer or a tradesman. The wages of
the former is not the expense; it is the want of a common interest with you,
and this you can obtain in no one but a wife. But there are the children. I,
for my part, firmly believe that a farmer, married at twenty-five, and having
ten children during the first ten years, would be able to save more money
during these years, than a bachelor, of the same age, would be able to save,
on the same farm, in a like space of time, he keeping only one maid servant.
One single fit of illness, of two months' duration, might sweep away more
than all the children would cost in the whole ten years, to say nothing of the
continual waste and pillage, and the idleness, going on from the first day of
the ten years to the last.
213. Besides, is the money all? What a life to lead!! No one to talk to
without going from home, or without getting some one to come to you; no
friend to sit and talk to: pleasant evenings to pass! Nobody to share with
you your sorrows or your pleasures: no soul having a common interest with
you: all around you taking care of themselves, and no care of you: no one to
cheer you in moments of depression: to say all in a word, no one to love
you, and no prospect of ever seeing any such one to the end of your days.
For, as to parents and brethren, if you have them, they have other and very
different ties; and, however laudable your feelings as son and brother, those
feelings are of a different character. Then as to gratifications, from which
you will hardly abstain altogether, are they generally of little expense? and
are they attended with no trouble, no vexation, no disappointment, no
jealousy even, and are they never followed by shame or remorse?
214. It does very well in bantering songs, to say that the bachelor's life is
'devoid of care.' My observation tells me the contrary, and reason concurs,
in this regard, with experience. The bachelor has no one on whom he can in
all cases rely. When he quits his home, he carries with him cares that are
unknown to the married man. If, indeed, like the common soldier, he have
merely a lodging-place, and a bundle of clothes, given in charge to some
one, he may be at his ease; but if he possess any thing of a home, he is
never sure of its safety; and this uncertainty is a great enemy to

cheerfulness. And as to efficiency in life, how is the bachelor to equal the
married man? In the case of farmers and tradesmen, the latter have so
clearly the advantage over the former, that one need hardly insist upon the
point; but it is, and must be, the same in all the situations of life. To provide
for a wife and children is the greatest of all possible spurs to exertion. Many
a man, naturally prone to idleness, has become active and industrious when
he saw children growing up about him; many a dull sluggard has become, if
not a bright man, at least a bustling man, when roused to exertion by his
love. Dryden's account of the change wrought in CYMON, is only a strong
case of the kind. And, indeed, if a man will not exert himself for the sake of
a wife and children, he can have no exertion in him; or he must be deaf to
all the dictates of nature.
215. Perhaps the world never exhibited a more striking proof of the truth of
this doctrine than that which is exhibited in me; and I am sure that every
one will say, without any hesitation, that a fourth part of the labours I have
performed, never would have been performed, if I had not been a married
man. In the first place, they could not; for I should, all the early part of my
life, have been rambling and roving about as most bachelors are. I should
have had no home that I cared a straw about, and should have wasted the far
greater part of my time. The great affair of home being settled, having the
home secured, I had leisure to employ my mind on things which it delighted
in. I got rid at once of all cares, all anxieties, and had only to provide for the
very moderate wants of that home. But the children began to come. They
sharpened my industry: they spurred me on. To be sure, I had other and
strong motives: I wrote for fame, and was urged forward by ill-treatment,
and by the desire to triumph over my enemies; but, after all, a very large
part of my nearly a hundred volumes may be fairly ascribed to the wife and
children.
216. I might have done something; but, perhaps, not a thousandth part of
what I have done; not even a thousandth part: for the chances are, that I,
being fond of a military life, should have ended my days ten or twenty years
ago, in consequence of wounds, or fatigue, or, more likely, in consequence
of the persecutions of some haughty and insolent fool, whom nature had
formed to black my shoes, and whom a system of corruption had made my
commander. Love came and rescued me from this state of horrible slavery;
placed the whole of my time at my own disposal; made me as free as air;

removed every restraint upon the operations of my mind, naturally disposed
to communicate its thoughts to others; and gave me, for my leisure hours, a
companion, who, though deprived of all opportunity of acquiring what is
called learning, had so much good sense, so much useful knowledge, was
so innocent, so just in all her ways, so pure in thought, word and deed, so
disinterested, so generous, so devoted to me and her children, so free from
all disguise, and, withal, so beautiful and so talkative, and in a voice so
sweet, so cheering, that I must, seeing the health and the capacity which it
had pleased God to give me, have been a criminal, if I had done much less
than that which I have done; and I have always said, that, if my country feel
any gratitude for my labours, that gratitude is due to her full as much as to
me.
217. 'Care'! What care have I known! I have been buffeted about by this
powerful and vindictive Government; I have repeatedly had the fruit of my
labour snatched away from me by it; but I had a partner that never frowned,
that was never melancholy, that never was subdued in spirit, that never
abated a smile, on these occasions, that fortified me, and sustained me by
her courageous example, and that was just as busy and as zealous in taking
care of the remnant as she had been in taking care of the whole; just as
cheerful, and just as full of caresses, when brought down to a mean hired
lodging, as when the mistress of a fine country house, with all its
accompaniments; and, whether from her words or her looks, no one could
gather that she regretted the change. What 'cares' have I had, then? What
have I had worthy of the name of 'cares'?
218. And, how is it now? How is it when the sixty-fourth year has come?
And how should I have been without this wife and these children? I might
have amassed a tolerable heap of money; but what would that have done for
me? It might have bought me plenty of professions of attachment; plenty of
persons impatient for my exit from the world; but not one single grain of
sorrow, for any anguish that might have attended my approaching end. To
me, no being in this world appears so wretched as an Old Bachelor. Those
circumstances, those changes in his person and in his mind, which, in the
husband, increase rather than diminish the attentions to him, produce all the
want of feeling attendant on disgust; and he beholds, in the conduct of the
mercenary crew that generally surround him, little besides an eager desire

to profit from that event, the approach of which, nature makes a subject of
sorrow with him.
219. Before I quit this part of my work, I cannot refrain from offering my
opinion with regard to what is due from husband to wife, when the disposal
of his property comes to be thought of. When marriage is an affair settled
by deeds, contracts, and lawyers, the husband, being bound beforehand, has
really no will to make. But where he has a will to make, and a faithful wife
to leave behind him, it is his first duty to provide for her future well-being,
to the utmost of his power. If she brought him no money, she brought him
her person; and by delivering that up to him, she established a claim to his
careful protection of her to the end of her life. Some men think, or act as if
they thought, that, if a wife bring no money, and if the husband gain money
by his business or profession, that money is his, and not hers, because she
has not been doing any of those things for which the money has been
received. But is this way of thinking just? By the marriage vow, the
husband endows the wife with all his worldly goods; and not a bit too much
is this, when she is giving him the command and possession of her person.
But does she not help to acquire the money? Speaking, for instance, of the
farmer or the merchant, the wife does not, indeed, go to plough, or to look
after the ploughing and sowing; she does not purchase or sell the stock; she
does not go to the fair or the market; but she enables him to do all these
without injury to his affairs at home; she is the guardian of his property; she
preserves what would otherwise be lost to him. The barn and the granary,
though they create nothing, have, in the bringing of food to our mouths, as
much merit as the fields themselves. The wife does not, indeed, assist in the
merchant's counting-house; she does not go upon the exchange; she does
not even know what he is doing; but she keeps his house in order; she rears
up his children; she provides a scene of suitable resort for his friends; she
insures him a constant retreat from the fatigues of his affairs; she makes his
home pleasant, and she is the guardian of his income.
220. In both these cases, the wife helps to gain the money; and in cases
where there is no gain, where the income is by descent, or is fixed, she
helps to prevent it from being squandered away. It is, therefore, as much
hers as it is the husband's; and though the law gives him, in many cases, the
power of keeping her share from her, no just man will ever avail himself of
that power. With regard to the tying up of widows from marrying again, I

will relate what took place in a case of this kind, in America. A merchant,
who had, during his married state, risen from poverty to very great riches,
and who had, nevertheless, died at about forty years of age, left the whole
of his property to his wife for her life, and at her disposal at her death,
provided that she did not marry. The consequence was, that she took a
husband without marrying, and, at her death (she having no children), gave
the whole of the property to the second husband! So much for posthumous
jealousy!
221. Where there are children, indeed, it is the duty of the husband to
provide, in certain cases, against step-fathers, who are very prone not to be
the most just and affectionate parents. It is an unhappy circumstance, when
a dying father is compelled to have fears of this sort. There is seldom an
apology to be offered for a mother that will hazard the happiness of her
children by a second marriage. The law allows it, to be sure; but there is, as
Prior says, 'something beyond the letter of the law.' I know what ticklish
ground I am treading on here; but, though it is as lawful for a woman to
take a second husband as for a man to take a second wife, the cases are
different, and widely different, in the eye of morality and of reason; for, as
adultery in the wife is a greater offence than adultery in the husband; as it is
more gross, as it includes prostitution; so a second marriage in the woman
is more gross than in the man, argues great deficiency in that delicacy, that
innate modesty, which, after all, is the great charm, the charm of charms, in
the female sex. I do not like to hear a man talk of his first wife, especially in
the presence of a second; but to hear a woman thus talk of her first husband,
has never, however beautiful and good she might be, failed to sink her in
my estimation. I have, in such cases, never been able to keep out of my
mind that concatenation of ideas, which, in spite of custom, in spite of the
frequency of the occurrence, leave an impression deeply disadvantageous to
the party; for, after the greatest of ingenuity has exhausted itself in the way
of apology, it comes to this at last, that the person has a second time
undergone that surrender, to which nothing but the most ardent affection,
could ever reconcile a chaste and delicate woman.
222. The usual apologies, that 'a lone woman wants a protector; that she
cannot manage her estate; that she cannot carry on her business; that she
wants a home for her children'; all these apologies are not worth a straw; for
what is the amount of them? Why, that she surrenders her person to secure

these ends! And if we admit the validity of such apologies, are we far from
apologising for the kept-mistress, and even the prostitute? Nay, the former
of these may (if she confine herself to one man) plead more boldly in her
defence; and even the latter may plead that hunger, which knows no law,
and no decorum, and no delicacy. These unhappy, but justly-reprobated and
despised parties, are allowed no apology at all: though reduced to the
begging of their bread, the world grants them no excuse. The sentence on
them is: 'You shall suffer every hardship; you shall submit to hunger and
nakedness; you shall perish by the way-side, rather than you shall surrender
your person to the dishonour of the female sex.' But can we, without crying
injustice, pass this sentence upon them, and, at the same time hold it to be
proper, decorous, and delicate, that widows shall surrender their persons
for worldly gain, for the sake of ease, or for any consideration whatsoever?
223. It is disagreeable to contemplate the possibility of cases of separation;
but amongst the evils of life, such have occurred, and will occur; and the
injured parties, while they are sure to meet with the pity of all just persons,
must console themselves that they have not merited their fate. In the making
one's choice, no human foresight or prudence can, in all cases, guard against
an unhappy result. There is one species of husbands to be occasionally met
with in all countries, meriting particular reprobation, and causing us to
lament, that there is no law to punish offenders so enormous. There was a
man in Pennsylvania, apparently a very amiable young man, having a good
estate of his own, and marrying a most beautiful woman of his own age, of
rich parents, and of virtue perfectly spotless. He very soon took to both
gaming and drinking (the last being the most fashionable vice of the
country); he neglected his affairs and his family; in about four years spent
his estate, and became a dependent on his wife's father, together with his
wife and three children. Even this would have been of little consequence, as
far as related to expense; but he led the most scandalous life, and was
incessant in his demands of money for the purposes of that infamous life.
All sorts of means were resorted to to reclaim him, and all in vain; and the
wretch, availing himself of the pleading of his wife's affection, and of his
power over the children more especially, continued for ten or twelve years
to plunder the parents, and to disgrace those whom it was his bounden duty
to assist in making happy. At last, going out in the dark, in a boat, and being
partly drunk, he went to the bottom of the Delaware, and became food for

otters or fishes, to the great joy of all who knew him, excepting only his
amiable wife. I can form an idea of no baseness equal to this. There is more
of baseness in this character than in that of the robber. The man who obtains
the means of indulging in vice, by robbery, exposes himself to the
inflictions of the law; but though he merits punishment, he merits it less
than the base miscreant who obtains his means by his threats to disgrace his
own wife, children, and the wife's parents. The short way in such a case, is
the best; set the wretch at defiance; resort to the strong arm of the law
wherever it will avail you; drive him from your house like a mad dog; for,
be assured, that a being so base and cruel is never to be reclaimed: all your
efforts at persuasion are useless; his promises and vows are made but to be
broken; all your endeavours to keep the thing from the knowledge of the
world, only prolong his plundering of you; and many a tender father and
mother have been ruined by such endeavours; the whole story must come
out at last, and it is better to come out before you be ruined, than after your
ruin is completed.
224. However, let me hope, that those who read this work will always be
secure against evils like these; let me hope, that the young men who read it
will abstain from those vices which lead to such fatal results; that they will,
before they utter the marriage vow, duly reflect on the great duties that that
vow imposes on them; that they will repel, from the outset, every
temptation to any thing tending to give pain to the defenceless persons
whose love for them have placed them at their mercy; and that they will
imprint on their own minds this truth, that a bad husband was never yet a
happy man.

LETTER V

TO A FATHER
225. 'Little children,' says the Scripture, 'are like arrows in the hands of the
giant, and blessed is the man that hath his quiver full of them'; a beautiful
figure to describe, in forcible terms, the support, the power, which a father
derives from being surrounded by a family. And what father, thus blessed, is
there who does not feel, in this sort of support, a reliance which he feels in
no other? In regard to this sort of support there is no uncertainty, no doubts,
no misgivings; it is yourself that you see in your children: their bosoms are
the safe repository of even the whispers of your mind: they are the great and
unspeakable delight of your youth, the pride of your prime of life, and the
props of your old age. They proceed from that love, the pleasures of which
no tongue or pen can adequately describe, and the various blessings which
they bring are equally incapable of description.
226. But, to make them blessings, you must act your part well; for they
may, by your neglect, your ill-treatment, your evil example, be made to be
the contrary of blessings; instead of pleasure, they may bring you pain;
instead of making your heart glad, the sight of them may make it sorrowful;
instead of being the staff of your old age, they may bring your gray hairs in
grief to the grave.
227. It is, therefore, of the greatest importance, that you here act well your
part, omitting nothing, even from the very beginning, tending to give you
great and unceasing influence over their minds; and, above all things, to
ensure, if possible, an ardent love of their mother. Your first duty towards
them is resolutely to prevent their drawing the means of life from any breast
but hers. That is their own; it is their birthright; and if that fail from any
natural cause, the place of it ought to be supplied by those means which are
frequently resorted to without employing a hireling breast. I am aware of
the too frequent practice of the contrary; I am well aware of the offence
which I shall here give to many; but it is for me to do my duty, and to set,
with regard to myself, consequences at defiance.

228. In the first place, no food is so congenial to the child as the milk of its
own mother; its quality is made by nature to suit the age of the child; it
comes with the child, and is calculated precisely for its stomach. And, then,
what sort of a mother must that be who can endure the thought of seeing her
child at another breast! The suckling may be attended with great pain, and it
is so attended in many cases; but this pain is a necessary consequence of
pleasures foregone; and, besides, it has its accompanying pleasures too. No
mother ever suffered more than my wife did from suckling her children.
How many times have I seen her, when the child was beginning to draw,
bite her lips while the tears ran down her cheeks! Yet, having endured this,
the smiles came and dried up the tears; and the little thing that had caused
the pain received abundant kisses as its punishment.
229. Why, now, did I not love her the more for this? Did not this tend to
rivet her to my heart? She was enduring this for me; and would not this
endearing thought have been wanting, if I had seen the baby at a breast that
I had hired and paid for; if I had had two women, one to bear the child and
another to give it milk? Of all the sights that this world affords, the most
delightful in my eyes, even to an unconcerned spectator, is, a mother with
her clean and fat baby lugging at her breast, leaving off now-and-then and
smiling, and she, occasionally, half smothering it with kisses. What must
that sight be, then, to the father of the child?
230. Besides, are we to overlook the great and wonderful effect that this has
on the minds of children? As they succeed each other, they see with their
own eyes, the pain, the care, the caresses, which their mother has endured
for, or bestowed, on them; and nature bids them love her accordingly. To
love her ardently becomes part of their very nature; and when the time
comes that her advice to them is necessary as a guide for their conduct, this
deep and early impression has all its natural weight, which must be wholly
wanting if the child be banished to a hireling breast, and only brought at
times into the presence of the mother, who is, in fact, no mother, or, at least,
but half a one. The children who are thus banished, love (as is natural and
just) the foster-mother better than the real mother as long as they are at the
breast. When this ceases, they are taught to love their own mother most; but
this teaching is of a cold and formal kind. They may, and generally do, in a
short time, care little about the foster-mother; the teaching weans all their
affection from her, but it does not transfer it to the other.

231. I had the pleasure to know, in Hampshire, a lady who had brought up a
family of ten children by hand, as they call it. Owing to some defect, she
could not suckle her children; but she wisely and heroically resolved, that
her children should hang upon no other breast, and that she would not
participate in the crime of robbing another child of its birthright, and, as is
mostly the case, of its life. Who has not seen these banished children, when
brought and put into the arms of their mothers, screaming to get from them,
and stretch out their little hands to get back into the arms of the nurse, and
when safely got there, hugging the hireling as if her bosom were a place of
refuge? Why, such a sight is, one would think, enough to strike a mother
dead. And what sort of a husband and father, I want to know, must that be,
who can endure the thought of his child loving another woman more than
its own mother and his wife?
232. And besides all these considerations, is there no crime in robbing the
child of the nurse, and in exposing it to perish? It will not do to say that the
child of the nurse may be dead, and thereby leave her breast for the use of
some other. Such cases must happen too seldom to be at all relied on; and,
indeed, every one must see, that, generally speaking, there must be a child
cast off for every one that is put to a hireling breast. Now, without
supposing it possible, that the hireling will, in any case, contrive to get rid
of her own child, every man who employs such hireling, must know, that he
is exposing such child to destruction; that he is assisting to rob it of the
means of life; and, of course, assisting to procure its death, as completely as
a man can, in any case, assist in causing death by starvation; a consideration
which will make every just man in the world recoil at the thought of
employing a hireling breast. For he is not to think of pacifying his
conscience by saying, that he knows nothing about the hireling's child. He
does know; for he must know, that she has a child, and that he is a principal
in robbing it of the means of life. He does not cast it off and leave it to
perish himself, but he causes the thing to be done; and to all intents and
purposes, he is a principal in the cruel and cowardly crime.
233. And if an argument could possibly be yet wanting to the husband; if
his feelings were so stiff as still to remain unmoved, must not the wife be
aware that whatever face the world may put upon it, however custom may
seem to bear her out; must she not be aware that every one must see the
main motive which induces her to banish from her arms that which has

formed part of her own body? All the pretences about her sore breasts and
her want of strength are vain: nature says that she is to endure the pains as
well as the pleasures: whoever has heard the bleating of the ewe for her
lamb, and has seen her reconciled, or at least pacified, by having presented
to her the skin or some of the blood of her dead lamb: whoever has
witnessed the difficulty of inducing either ewe or cow to give her milk to an
alien young one: whoever has seen the valour of the timid hen in defending
her brood, and has observed that she never swallows a morsel that is fit for
her young, until they be amply satisfied: whoever has seen the wild birds,
though, at other times, shunning even the distant approach of man, flying
and screaming round his head, and exposing themselves to almost certain
death in defence of their nests: whoever has seen these things, or any one of
them, must question the motive that can induce a mother to banish a child
from her own breast to that of one who has already been so unnatural as to
banish hers. And, in seeking for a motive sufficiently powerful to lead to
such an act, women must excuse men, if they be not satisfied with the
ordinary pretences; they must excuse me, at any rate, if I do not stop even at
love of ease and want of maternal affection, and if I express my fear, that,
superadded to the unjustifiable motives, there is one which is calculated to
excite disgust; namely, a desire to be quickly freed from that restraint which
the child imposes, and to hasten back, unbridled and undisfigured, to those
enjoyments, to have an eagerness for which, or to wish to excite a desire for
which, a really delicate woman will shudder at the thought of being
suspected.
234. I am well aware of the hostility that I have here been exciting; but
there is another, and still more furious, bull to take by the horns, and which
would have been encountered some pages back (that being the proper
place), had I not hesitated between my duty and my desire to avoid giving
offence; I mean the employing of male-operators, on those occasions where
females used to be employed. And here I have every thing against me; the
now general custom, even amongst the most chaste and delicate women; the
ridicule continually cast on old midwives; the interest of a profession, for
the members of which I entertain more respect and regard than for those of
any other; and, above all the rest, my own example to the contrary, and my
knowledge that every husband has the same apology that I had. But because
I acted wrong myself, it is not less, but rather more, my duty to endeavour

to dissuade others from doing the same. My wife had suffered very severely
with her second child, which, at last, was still-born. The next time I pleaded
for the doctor; and, after every argument that I could think of, obtained a
reluctant consent. Her life was so dear to me, that every thing else appeared
as nothing. Every husband has the same apology to make; and thus, from
the good, and not from the bad, feelings of men, the practice has become far
too general, for me to hope even to narrow it; but, nevertheless, I cannot
refrain from giving my opinion on the subject.
235. We are apt to talk in a very unceremonious style of our rude ancestors,
of their gross habits, their want of delicacy in their language. No man shall
ever make me believe, that those, who reared the cathedral of ELY (which I
saw the other day), were rude, either in their manners or in their minds and
words. No man shall make me believe, that our ancestors were a rude and
beggarly race, when I read in an act of parliament, passed in the reign of
Edward the Fourth, regulating the dresses of the different ranks of the
people, and forbidding the LABOURERS to wear coats of cloth that cost
more than two shillings a yard (equal to forty shillings of our present
money), and forbidding their wives and daughters to wear sashes, or
girdles, trimmed with gold or silver. No man shall make me believe that this
was a rude and beggarly race, compared with those who now shirk and
shiver about in canvass frocks and rotten cottons. Nor shall any man
persuade me that that was a rude and beggarly state of things, in which
(reign of Edward the Third) an act was passed regulating the wages of
labour, and ordering that a woman, for weeding in the corn, should receive
a penny a day, while a quart of red wine was sold for a penny, and a pair of
men's shoes for two-pence. No man shall make me believe that agriculture
was in a rude state, when an act like this was passed, or that our ancestors
of that day were rude in their minds, or in their thoughts. Indeed, there are a
thousand proofs, that, whether in regard to domestic or foreign affairs,
whether in regard to internal freedom and happiness, or to weight in the
world, England was at her zenith about the reign of Edward the Third. The
Reformation, as it is called, gave her a complete pull down. She revived
again in the reigns of the Stuarts, as far as related to internal affairs; but the
'Glorious Revolution' and its debt and its taxes, have, amidst the false glare
of new palaces, roads, and canals, brought her down until she is become the
land of domestic misery and of foreign impotence and contempt; and, until

she, amidst all her boasted improvements and refinements, tremblingly
awaits her fall.
236. However, to return from this digression, rude and unrefined as our
mothers might be, plain and unvarnished as they might be in their language,
accustomed as they might be to call things by their names, though they
were not so very delicate as to use the word small-clothes; and to be quite
unable, in speaking of horn-cattle, horses, sheep, the canine race, and
poultry, to designate them by their sexual appellations; though they might
not absolutely faint at hearing these appellations used by others; rude and
unrefined and indelicate as they might be, they did not suffer, in the cases
alluded to, the approaches of men, which approaches are unceremoniously
suffered, and even sought, by their polished and refined and delicate
daughters; and of unmarried men too, in many cases; and of very young
men.
237. From all antiquity this office was allotted to woman. Moses's life was
saved by the humanity of the Egyptian midwife; and to the employment of
females in this memorable case, the world is probably indebted for that
which has been left it by that greatest of all law-givers, whose institutes,
rude as they were, have been the foundation of all the wisest and most just
laws in all the countries of Europe and America. It was the fellow feeling of
the midwife for the poor mother that saved Moses. And none but a mother
can, in such cases, feel to the full and effectual extent that which the
operator ought to feel. She has been in the same state herself; she knows
more about the matter, except in cases of very rare occurrence, than any
man, however great his learning and experience, can ever know. She knows
all the previous symptoms; she can judge more correctly than man can
judge in such a case; she can put questions to the party, which a man cannot
put; the communication between the two is wholly without reserve; the
person of the one is given up to the other, as completely as her own is under
her command. This never can be the case with a man-operator; for, after all
that can be said or done, the native feeling of women, in whatever rank of
life, will, in these cases, restrain them from saying and doing, before a man,
even before a husband, many things which they ought to say and do. So
that, perhaps, even with regard to the bare question of comparative safety to
life, the midwife is the preferable person.

238. But safety to life is not ALL. The preservation of life is not to be
preferred to EVERY THING. Ought not a man to prefer death to the
commission of treason against his country? Ought not a man to die, rather
than save his life by the prostitution of his wife to a tyrant, who insists upon
the one or the other? Every man and every woman will answer in the
affirmative to both these questions. There are, then, cases where people
ought to submit to certain death. Surely, then, the mere chance, the mere
possibility of it, ought not to outweigh the mighty considerations on the
other side; ought not to overcome that inborn modesty, that sacred reserve
as to their persons, which, as I said before, is the charm of charms of the
female sex, and which our mothers, rude as they are called by us, took, we
may be satisfied, the best and most effectual means of preserving.
239. But is there, after all, any thing real in this greater security for the life
of either mother or child? If, then, risk were so great as to call upon women
to overcome this natural repugnance to suffer the approaches of a man, that
risk must be general; it must apply to all women; and, further, it must, ever
since the creation of man, always have so applied. Now, resorting to the
employment of men-operators has not been in vogue in Europe more than
about seventy years, and has not been general in England more than about
thirty or forty years. So that the risk in employing midwives must, of late
years, have become vastly greater than it was even when I was a boy, or the
whole race must have been extinguished long ago. And, then, how puzzled
we should be to account for the building of all the cathedrals, and all the
churches, and the draining of all the marshes, and all the fens, more than a
thousand years before the word 'accoucheur' ever came from the lips of
woman, and before the thought came into her mind? And here, even in the
use of this word, we have a specimen of the refined delicacy of the present
age; here we have, varnish the matter over how we may, modesty in the
word and grossness in the thought. Farmers' wives, daughters, and maids,
cannot now allude to, or hear named, without blushing, those affairs of the
homestead, which they, within my memory, used to talk about as freely as
of milking or spinning; but, have they become more really modest than their
mothers were? Has this refinement made them more continent than those
rude mothers? A jury at Westminster gave, about six years ago, damages to
a man, calling himself a gentleman, against a farmer, because the latter, for
the purpose for which such animals are kept, had a bull in his yard, on

which the windows of the gentleman looked! The plaintiff alleged, that this
was so offensive to his wife and daughters, that, if the defendant were not
compelled to desist, he should be obliged to brick up his windows, or to quit
the house! If I had been the father of these, at once, delicate and curious
daughters, I would not have been the herald of their purity of mind; and if I
had been the suitor of one of them, I would have taken care to give up the
suit with all convenient speed; for how could I reasonably have hoped ever
to be able to prevail on delicacy, so exquisite, to commit itself to a pair of
bridal sheets? In spite, however, of all this 'refinement in the human mind,'
which is everlastingly dinned in our ears; in spite of the 'small-clothes,' and
of all the other affected stuff, we have this conclusion, this indubitable
proof, of the falling off in real delicacy; namely, that common prostitutes,
formerly unknown, now swarm in our towns, and are seldom wanting even
in our villages; and where there was one illegitimate child (including those
coming before the time) only fifty years ago, there are now twenty.
240. And who can say how far the employment of men, in the cases alluded
to, may have assisted in producing this change, so disgraceful to the present
age, and so injurious to the female sex? The prostitution and the swarms of
illegitimate children have a natural and inevitable tendency to lessen that
respect, and that kind and indulgent feeling, which is due from all men to
virtuous women. It is well known that the unworthy members of any
profession, calling, or rank in life, cause, by their acts, the whole body to
sink in the general esteem; it is well known, that the habitual dishonesty of
merchants trading abroad, the habitual profligate behaviour of travellers
from home, the frequent proofs of abject submission to tyrants; it is well
known, that these may give the character of dishonesty, profligacy, or
cowardice, to a whole nation. There are, doubtless, many men in
Switzerland, who abhor the infamous practices of men selling themselves,
by whole regiments, to fight for any foreign state that will pay them, no
matter in what cause, and no matter whether against their own parents or
brethren; but the censure falls upon the whole nation: and 'no money, no
Swiss,' is a proverb throughout the world. It is, amidst those scenes of
prostitution and bastardy, impossible for men in general to respect the
female sex to the degree that they formerly did; while numbers will be apt
to adopt the unjust sentiment of the old bachelor, POPE, that 'every woman
is, at heart, a rake.'

241. Who knows, I say, in what degree the employment of men-operators
may have tended to produce this change, so injurious to the female sex?
Aye, and to encourage unfeeling and brutal men to propose that the dead
bodies of females, if poor, should be sold for the purpose of exhibition and
dissection before an audience of men; a proposition that our 'rude ancestors'
would have answered, not by words, but by blows! Alas! our women may
talk of 'small-clothes' as long as they please; they may blush to scarlet at
hearing animals designated by their sexual appellations; it may, to give the
world a proof of our excessive modesty and delicacy, even pass a law
(indeed we have done it) to punish 'an exposure of the person'; but as long
as our streets swarm with prostitutes, our asylums and private houses with
bastards; as long as we have man-operators in the delicate cases alluded to,
and as long as the exhibiting of the dead body of a virtuous female before
an audience of men shall not be punished by the law, and even with death;
as long as we shall appear to be satisfied in this state of things, it becomes
us, at any rate, to be silent about purity of mind, improvement of manners,
and an increase of refinement and delicacy.
242. This practice has brought the 'doctor' into every family in the kingdom,
which is of itself no small evil. I am not thinking of the expense; for, in
cases like these, nothing in that way ought to be spared. If necessary to the
safety of his wife, a man ought not only to part with his last shilling, but to
pledge his future labour. But we all know that there are imaginary ailments,
many of which are absolutely created by the habit of talking with or about
the 'doctor.' Read the 'DOMESTIC MEDICINE,' and by the time that you
have done, you will imagine that you have, at times, all the diseases of
which it treats. This practice has added to, has doubled, aye, has augmented,
I verily believe, ten-fold the number of the gentlemen who are, in common
parlance, called 'doctors'; at which, indeed, I, on my own private account,
ought to rejoice; for, invariably I have, even in the worst of times, found
them every where amongst my staunchest and kindest friends. But though
these gentlemen are not to blame for this, any more than attorneys are for
their increase in number; and amongst these gentlemen, too, I have, with
very few exceptions, always found sensible men and zealous friends;
though the parties pursuing these professions are not to blame; though the
increase of attorneys has arisen from the endless number and the
complexity of the laws, and from the ten-fold mass of crimes caused by

poverty arising from oppressive taxation; and though the increase of
'doctors' has arisen from the diseases and the imaginary ailments arising
from that effeminate luxury which has been created by the drawing of
wealth from the many, and giving it to the few; and, as the lower classes
will always endeavour to imitate the higher, so the 'accoucheur' has, along
with the 'small-clothes,' descended from the loan-monger's palace down to
the hovel of the pauper, there to take his fee out of the poor-rates; though
these parties are not to blame, the thing is not less an evil. Both professions
have lost in character, in proportion to the increase in the number of its
members; peaches, if they grew on hedges, would rank but little above the
berries of the bramble.
243. But to return once more to the matter of risk of life; can it be that
nature has so ordered it, that, as a general thing, the life of either mother or
child shall be in danger, even if there were no attendant at all? Can this be?
Certainly it cannot: safety must be the rule, and danger the exception; this
must be the case, or the world never could have been peopled; and, perhaps,
in ninety-nine cases out of every hundred, if nature were left wholly to
herself, all would be right. The great doctor in these cases, is, comforting,
consoling, cheering up. And who can perform this office like women? who
have for these occasions a language and sentiments which seem to have
been invented for the purpose; and be they what they may as to general
demeanour and character, they have all, upon these occasions, one common
feeling, and that so amiable, so excellent, as to admit of no adequate
description. They completely forget, for the time, all rivalships, all
squabbles, all animosities, all hatred even; every one feels as if it were her
own particular concern.
244. These, we may be well assured, are the proper attendants on these
occasions; the mother, the aunt, the sister, the cousin, and female neighbour;
these are the suitable attendants, having some experienced woman to afford
extraordinary aid, if such be necessary; and in the few cases where the
preservation of life demands the surgeon's skill, he is always at hand. The
contrary practice, which we got from the French, is not, however, so
general in France as in England. We have outstripped all the world in this,
as we have in every thing which proceeds from luxury and effeminacy on
the one hand, and from poverty on the other; the millions have been
stripped of their means to heap wealth on the thousands, and have been

corrupted in manners, as well as in morals, by vicious examples set them by
the possessors of that wealth. As reason says that the practice of which I
complain cannot be cured without a total change in society, it would be
presumption in me to expect such cure from any efforts of mine. I therefore
must content myself with hoping that such change will come, and with
declaring, that if I had to live my life over again, I would act upon the
opinions which I have thought it my bounden duty here to state and
endeavour to maintain.
245. Having gotten over these thorny places as quickly as possible, I gladly
come back to the BABIES; with regard to whom I shall have no prejudices,
no affectation, no false pride, no sham fears to encounter; every heart
(except there be one made of flint) being with me here. 'Then were there
brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and
pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little children,
and forbid them not to come unto me; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'
A figure most forcibly expressive of the character and beauty of innocence,
and, at the same time, most aptly illustrative of the doctrine of regeneration.
And where is the man; the woman who is not fond of babies is not worthy
the name; but where is the man who does not feel his heart softened; who
does not feel himself become gentler; who does not lose all the hardness of
his temper; when, in any way, for any purpose, or by any body, an appeal is
made to him in behalf of these so helpless and so perfectly innocent little
creatures?
246. SHAKSPEARE, who is cried up as the great interpreter of the human
heart, has said, that the man in whose soul there is no music, or love of
music, is 'fit for murders, treasons, stratagems, and spoils.' 'Our immortal
bard,' as the profligate SHERIDAN used to call him in public, while he
laughed at him in private; our 'immortal bard' seems to have forgotten that
Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, were flung into the fiery furnace (made
seven times hotter than usual) amidst the sound of the cornet, flute, harp,
sackbut, and dulcimer, and all kinds of music; he seems to have forgotten
that it was a music and a dance-loving damsel that chose, as a recompense
for her elegant performance, the bloody head of John the Baptist, brought to
her in a charger; he seems to have forgotten that, while Rome burned, Nero
fiddled: he did not know, perhaps, that cannibals always dance and sing
while their victims are roasting; but he might have known, and he must

have known, that England's greatest tyrant, Henry VIII., had, as his agent in
blood, Thomas Cromwell, expressed it, 'his sweet soul enwrapped in the
celestial sounds of music;' and this was just at the time when the ferocious
tyrant was ordering Catholics and Protestants to be tied back to back on the
same hurdle, dragged to Smithfield on that hurdle, and there tied to, and
burnt from, the same stake. Shakspeare must have known these things, for
he lived immediately after their date; and if he had lived in our day, he
would have seen instances enough of 'sweet souls' enwrapped in the same
manner, and capable, if not of deeds equally bloody, of others, discovering a
total want of feeling for sufferings not unfrequently occasioned by their
own wanton waste, and waste arising, too, in part, from their taste for these
'celestial sounds.'
247. O no! the heart of man is not to be known by this test: a great fondness
for music is a mark of great weakness, great vacuity of mind: not of
hardness of heart; not of vice; not of downright folly; but of a want of
capacity, or inclination, for sober thought. This is not always the case:
accidental circumstances almost force the taste upon people: but, generally
speaking, it is a preference of sound to sense. But the man, and especially
the father, who is not fond of babies; who does not feel his heart softened
when he touches their almost boneless limbs; when he sees their little eyes
first begin to discern; when he hears their tender accents; the man whose
heart does not beat truly to this test, is, to say the best of him, an object of
compassion.
248. But the mother's feelings are here to be thought of too; for, of all
gratifications, the very greatest that a mother can receive, is notice taken of,
and praise bestowed on, her baby. The moment that gets into her arms,
every thing else diminishes in value, the father only excepted. Her own
personal charms, notwithstanding all that men say and have written on the
subject, become, at most, a secondary object as soon as the baby arrives. A
saying of the old, profligate King of Prussia is frequently quoted in proof of
the truth of the maxim, that a woman will forgive any thing but calling her
ugly; a very true maxim, perhaps, as applied to prostitutes, whether in high
or low life; but a pretty long life of observation has told me, that a mother,
worthy of the name, will care little about what you say of her person, so
that you will but extol the beauty of her baby. Her baby is always the very
prettiest that ever was born! It is always an eighth wonder of the world!

And thus it ought to be, or there would be a want of that wondrous
attachment to it which is necessary to bear her up through all those cares
and pains and toils inseparable from the preservation of its life and health.
249. It is, however, of the part which the husband has to act, in participating
in these cares and toils, that I am now to speak. Let no man imagine that the
world will despise him for helping to take care of his own child: thoughtless
fools may attempt to ridicule; the unfeeling few may join in the attempt; but
all, whose good opinion is worth having, will applaud his conduct, and will,
in many cases, be disposed to repose confidence in him on that very
account. To say of a man, that he is fond of his family, is, of itself, to say
that, in private life at least, he is a good and trust-worthy man; aye, and in
public life too, pretty much; for it is no easy matter to separate the two
characters; and it is naturally concluded, that he who has been flagrantly
wanting in feeling for his own flesh and blood, will not be very sensitive
towards the rest of mankind. There is nothing more amiable, nothing more
delightful to behold, than a young man especially taking part in the work of
nursing the children; and how often have I admired this in the labouring
men in Hampshire! It is, indeed, generally the same all over England; and
as to America, it would be deemed brutal for a man not to take his full share
of these cares and labours.
250. The man who is to gain a living by his labour, must be drawn away
from home, or, at least, from the cradle-side, in order to perform that labour;
but this will not, if he be made of good stuff, prevent him from doing his
share of the duty due to his children. There are still many hours in the
twenty-four, that he will have to spare for this duty; and there ought to be
no toils, no watchings, no breaking of rest, imposed by this duty, of which
he ought not to perform his full share, and that, too, without grudging. This
is strictly due from him in payment for the pleasures of the marriage state.
What right has he to the sole possession of a woman's person; what right to
a husband's vast authority; what right to the honourable title and the
boundless power of father: what right has he to all, or any of these, unless
he can found his claim on the faithful performance of all the duties which
these titles imply?
251. One great source of the unhappiness amongst mankind arises,
however, from a neglect of these duties; but, as if by way of compensation

for their privations, they are much more duly performed by the poor than by
the rich. The fashion of the labouring people is this: the husband, when free
from his toil in the fields, takes his share in the nursing, which he
manifestly looks upon as a sort of reward for his labour. However distant
from his cottage, his heart is always at that home towards which he is
carried, at night, by limbs that feel not their weariness, being urged on by a
heart anticipating the welcome of those who attend him there. Those who
have, as I so many hundreds of times have, seen the labourers in the
woodland parts of Hampshire and Sussex, coming, at night-fall, towards
their cottage-wickets, laden with fuel for a day or two; whoever has seen
three or four little creatures looking out for the father's approach, running in
to announce the glad tidings, and then scampering out to meet him, clinging
round his knees, or hanging on his skirts; whoever has witnessed scenes like
this, to witness which has formed one of the greatest delights of my life,
will hesitate long before he prefer a life of ease to a life of labour; before he
prefer a communication with children intercepted by servants and teachers
to that communication which is here direct, and which admits not of any
division of affection.
252. Then comes the Sunday; and, amongst all those who keep no servants,
a great deal depends on the manner in which the father employs that day.
When there are two or three children, or even one child, the first thing, after
the breakfast (which is late on this day of rest), is to wash and dress the
child or children. Then, while the mother is dressing the dinner, the father,
being in his Sunday-clothes himself, takes care of the child or children.
When dinner is over, the mother puts on her best; and then, all go to church,
or, if that cannot be, whether from distance or other cause, all pass the
afternoon together. This used to be the way of life amongst the labouring
people; and from this way of life arose the most able and most moral people
that the world ever saw, until grinding taxation took from them the means
of obtaining a sufficiency of food and of raiment; plunged the whole, good
and bad, into one indiscriminate mass, under the degrading and hateful
name of paupers.
253. The working man, in whatever line, and whether in town or country,
who spends his day of rest, or any part of it, except in case of absolute
necessity, away from his wife and children, is not worthy of the name of
father, and is seldom worthy of the trust of any employer. Such absence

argues a want of fatherly and of conjugal affection, which want is generally
duly repaid by a similar want in the neglected parties; and, though stern
authority may command and enforce obedience for a while, the time soon
comes when it will be set at defiance; and when such a father, having no
example, no proofs of love, to plead, complains of filial ingratitude, the
silent indifference of his neighbours, and which is more poignant, his own
heart, will tell him that his complaint is unjust.
254. Thus far with regard to working people; but much more necessary is it
to inculcate these principles in the minds of young men in the middle rank
of life, and to be more particular, in their case, with regard to the care due to
very young children, for here servants come in; and many are but too prone
to think, that when they have handed their children over to well-paid and
able servants, they have done their duty by them, than which there can
hardly be a more mischievous error. The children of the poorer people are,
in general, much fonder of their parents than those of the rich are of theirs:
this fondness is reciprocal; and the cause is, that the children of the former
have, from their very birth, had a greater share than those of the latter—of
the personal attention, and of the never-ceasing endearments of their
parents.
255. I have before urged upon young married men, in the middle walks of
life, to keep the servants out of the house as long as possible; and when
they must come at last, when they must be had even to assist in taking care
of children, let them be assistants in the most strict sense of the word; let
them not be confided in; let children never be left to them alone; and the
younger the child, the more necessary a rigid adherence to this rule. I shall
be told, perhaps, by some careless father, or some play-haunting mother,
that female servants are women, and have the tender feelings of women.
Very true; and, in general, as good and kind in their nature as the mother
herself. But they are not the mothers of your children, and it is not in nature
that they should have the care and anxiety adequate to the necessity of the
case. Out of the immediate care and personal superintendence of one or the
other of the parents, or of some trusty relation, no young child ought to be
suffered to be, if there be, at whatever sacrifice of ease or of property, any
possibility of preventing it: because, to insure, if possible, the perfect form,
the straight limbs, the sound body, and the sane mind of your children, is
the very first of all your duties. To provide fortunes for them; to make

provision for their future fame; to give them the learning necessary to the
calling for which you destine them: all these may be duties, and the last is a
duty; but a duty far greater than, and prior to, all these, is the duty of
neglecting nothing within your power to insure them a sane mind in a sound
and undeformed body. And, good God! how many are the instances of
deformed bodies, of crooked limbs, of idiocy, or of deplorable imbecility,
proceeding solely from young children being left to the care of servants!
One would imagine, that one single sight of this kind to be seen, or heard
of, in a whole nation, would be sufficient to deter parents from the practice.
And what, then, must those parents feel, who have brought this life-long
sorrowing on themselves! When once the thing is done, to repent is
unavailing. And what is now the worth of all the ease and all the pleasures,
to enjoy which the poor sufferer was abandoned to the care of servants!
256. What! can I plead example, then, in support of this rigid precept? Did
we, who have bred up a family of children, and have had servants during
the greater part of the time, never leave a young child to the care of
servants? Never; no, not for one single hour. Were we, then, tied constantly
to the house with them? No; for we sometimes took them out; but one or the
other of us was always with them, until, in succession, they were able to
take good care of themselves; or until the elder ones were able to take care
of the younger, and then they sometimes stood sentinel in our stead. How
could we visit then? Why, if both went, we bargained beforehand to take the
children with us; and if this were a thing not to be proposed, one of us went,
and the other stayed at home, the latter being very frequently my lot. From
this we never once deviated. We cast aside all consideration of convenience;
all calculations of expense; all thoughts of pleasure of every sort. And, what
could have equalled the reward that we have received for our care and for
our unshaken resolution in this respect?
257. In the rearing of children, there is resolution wanting as well as
tenderness. That parent is not truly affectionate who wants the courage to
do that which is sure to give the child temporary pain. A great deal, in
providing for the health and strength of children, depends upon their being
duly and daily washed, when well, in cold water from head to foot. Their
cries testify to what a degree they dislike this. They squall and kick and
twist about at a fine rate; and many mothers, too many, neglect this, partly
from reluctance to encounter the squalling, and partly, and much too often,

from what I will not call idleness, but to which I cannot apply a milder term
than neglect. Well and duly performed, it is an hour's good tight work; for,
besides the bodily labour, which is not very slight when the child gets to be
five or six months old, there is the singing to overpower the voice of the
child. The moment the stripping of the child used to begin, the singing used
to begin, and the latter never ceased till the former had ceased. After having
heard this go on with all my children, ROUSSEAU taught me the
philosophy of it. I happened, by accident, to look into his EMILE, and there
I found him saying, that the nurse subdued the voice of the child and made
it quiet, by drowning its voice in hers, and thereby making it perceive that it
could not be heard, and that to continue to cry was of no avail. 'Here,
Nancy,' said I (going to her with the book in my hand), 'you have been a
great philosopher all your life, without either of us knowing it.' A silent
nurse is a poor soul. It is a great disadvantage to the child, if the mother be
of a very silent, placid, quiet turn. The singing, the talking to, the tossing
and rolling about, that mothers in general practise, are very beneficial to the
children: they give them exercise, awaken their attention, animate them, and
rouse them to action. It is very bad to have a child even carried about by a
dull, inanimate, silent servant, who will never talk, sing or chirrup to it; who
will but just carry it about, always kept in the same attitude, and seeing and
hearing nothing to give it life and spirit. It requires nothing but a dull
creature like this, and the washing and dressing left to her, to give a child
the rickets, and make it, instead of being a strong straight person, tup-
shinned, bow-kneed, or hump-backed; besides other ailments not visible to
the eye. By-and-by, when the deformity begins to appear, the doctor is
called in, but it is too late: the mischief is done; and a few months of neglect
are punished by a life of mortification and sorrow, not wholly
unaccompanied with shame.
258. It is, therefore, a very spurious kind of tenderness that prevents a
mother from doing the things which, though disagreeable to the child, are
so necessary to its lasting well-being. The washing daily in the morning is a
great thing; cold water winter or summer, and this never left to a servant,
who has not, in such a case, either the patience or the courage that is
necessary for the task. When the washing is over, and the child dressed in
its day-clothes, how gay and cheerful it looks! The exercise gives it
appetite, and then disposes it to rest; and it sucks and sleeps and grows, the

delight of all eyes, and particularly those of the parents. 'I can't bear that
squalling!' I have heard men say; and to which I answer, that 'I can't bear
such men!' There are, I thank God, very few of them; for, if they do not
always reason about the matter, honest nature teaches them to be
considerate and indulgent towards little creatures so innocent and so
helpless and so unconscious of what they do. And the noise: after all, why
should it disturb a man? He knows the exact cause of it: he knows that it is
the unavoidable consequence of a great good to his child, and of course to
him: it lasts but an hour, and the recompense instantly comes in the looks of
the rosy child, and in the new hopes which every look excites. It never
disturbed me, and my occupation was one of those most liable to
disturbance by noise. Many a score papers have I written amidst the noise
of children, and in my whole life never bade them be still. When they grew
up to be big enough to gallop about the house, I have, in wet weather, when
they could not go out, written the whole day amidst noise that would have
made some authors half mad. It never annoyed me at all. But a Scotch piper,
whom an old lady, who lived beside us at Brompton, used to pay to come
and play a long tune every day, I was obliged to bribe into a breach of
contract. That which you are pleased with, however noisy, does not disturb
you. That which is indifferent to you has not more effect. The rattle of
coaches, the clapper of a mill, the fall of water, leave your mind
undisturbed. But the sound of the pipe, awakening the idea of the lazy life
of the piper, better paid than the labouring man, drew the mind aside from
its pursuit; and, as it really was a nuisance, occasioned by the money of my
neighbour, I thought myself justified in abating it by the same sort of
means.
259. The cradle is in poor families necessary; because necessity compels
the mother to get as much time as she can for her work, and a child can rock
the cradle. At first we had a cradle; and I rocked the cradle, in great part,
during the time that I was writing my first work, that famous MAÎTRE
D'ANGLAIS, which has long been the first book in Europe, as well as in
America, for teaching of French people the English language. But we left
off the use of the cradle as soon as possible. It causes sleep more, and
oftener, than necessary: it saves trouble; but to take trouble was our duty.
After the second child, we had no cradle, however difficult at first to do
without it. When I was not at my business, it was generally my affair to put

the child to sleep: sometimes by sitting with it in my arms, and sometimes
by lying down on a bed with it, till it fell asleep. We soon found the good of
this method. The children did not sleep so much, but they slept more
soundly. The cradle produces a sort of dosing, or dreaming sleep. This is a
matter of great importance, as every thing must be that has any influence on
the health of children. The poor must use the cradle, at least until they have
other children big enough to hold the baby, and to put it to sleep; and it is
truly wonderful at how early an age they, either girls or boys, will do this
business faithfully and well. You see them in the lanes, and on the skirts of
woods and commons, lugging a baby about, when it sometimes weighs half
as much as the nurse. The poor mother is frequently compelled, in order to
help to get bread for her children, to go to a distance from home, and leave
the group, baby and all, to take care of the house and of themselves, the
eldest of four or five, not, perhaps, above six or seven years old; and it is
quite surprising, that, considering the millions of instances in which this is
done in England, in the course of a year, so very, very few accidents or
injuries arise from the practice; and not a hundredth part so many as arise in
the comparatively few instances in which children are left to the care of
servants. In summer time you see these little groups rolling about up the
green, or amongst the heath, not far from the cottage, and at a mile, perhaps,
from any other dwelling, the dog their only protector. And what fine and
straight and healthy and fearless and acute persons they become! It used to
be remarked in Philadelphia, when I lived there, that there was not a single
man of any eminence, whether doctor, lawyer, merchant, trader, or any
thing else, that had not been born and bred in the country, and of parents in
a low state of life. Examine London, and you will find it much about the
same. From this very childhood they are from necessity entrusted with the
care of something valuable. They practically learn to think, and to calculate
as to consequences. They are thus taught to remember things; and it is quite
surprising what memories they have, and how scrupulously a little carter-
boy will deliver half-a-dozen messages, each of a different purport from the
rest, to as many persons, all the messages committed to him at one and the
same time, and he not knowing one letter of the alphabet from another.
When I want to remember something, and am out in the field, and cannot
write it down, I say to one of the men, or boys, come to me at such a time,
and tell me so and so. He is sure to do it; and I therefore look upon the
memorandum as written down. One of these children, boy or girl, is much

more worthy of being entrusted with the care of a baby, any body's baby,
than a servant-maid with curled locks and with eyes rolling about for
admirers. The locks and the rolling eyes, very nice, and, for aught I know,
very proper things in themselves; but incompatible with the care of your
baby, Ma'am; her mind being absorbed in contemplating the interesting
circumstances which are to precede her having a sweet baby of her own;
and a sweeter than yours, if you please, Ma'am; or, at least, such will be her
anticipations. And this is all right enough; it is natural that she should think
and feel thus; and knowing this, you are admonished that it is your bounden
duty not to delegate this sacred trust to any body.
260. The courage, of which I have spoken, so necessary in the case of
washing the children in spite of their screaming remonstrances, is, if
possible, more necessary in cases of illness, requiring the application of
medicine, or of surgical means of cure. Here the heart is put to the test
indeed! Here is anguish to be endured by a mother, who has to force down
the nauseous physic, or to apply the tormenting plaster! Yet it is the mother,
or the father, and more properly the former, who is to perform this duty of
exquisite pain. To no nurse, to no hireling, to no alien hand, ought, if
possible to avoid it, this task to be committed. I do not admire those
mothers who are too tender-hearted to inflict this pain on their children, and
who, therefore, leave it to be inflicted by others. Give me the mother who,
while the tears stream down her face, has the resolution scrupulously to
execute, with her own hands, the doctor's commands. Will a servant, will
any hireling, do this? Committed to such hands, the least trouble will be
preferred to the greater: the thing will, in general, not be half done; and if
done, the suffering from such hands is far greater in the mind of the child
than if it came from the hands of the mother. In this case, above all others,
there ought to be no delegation of the parental office. Here life or limb is at
stake; and the parent, man or woman, who, in any one point, can neglect his
or her duty here, is unworthy of the name of parent. And here, as in all the
other instances, where goodness in the parents towards the children gives
such weight to their advice when the children grow up, what a motive to
filial gratitude! The children who are old enough to deserve and remember,
will witness this proof of love and self-devotion in their mother. Each of
them feels that she has done the same towards them all; and they love her
and admire and revere her accordingly.

261. This is the place to state my opinions, and the result of my experience,
with regard to that fearful disease the SMALL-POX; a subject, too, to
which I have paid great attention. I was always, from the very first mention
of the thing, opposed to the Cow-Pox scheme. If efficacious in preventing
the Small-Pox, I objected to it merely on the score of its beastliness. There
are some things, surely, more hideous than death, and more resolutely to be
avoided; at any rate, more to be avoided than the mere risk of suffering
death. And, amongst other things, I always reckoned that of a parent
causing the blood, and the diseased blood too, of a beast to be put into the
veins of human beings, and those beings the children of that parent. I,
therefore, as will be seen in the pages of the Register of that day, most
strenuously opposed the giving of twenty thousand pounds to JENNER out
of the taxes, paid in great part by the working people, which I deemed and
asserted to be a scandalous waste of the public money.
262. I contended, that this beastly application could not, in nature, be
efficacious in preventing the Small-Pox; and that, even if efficacious for that
purpose, it was wholly unnecessary. The truth of the former of these
assertions has now been proved in thousands upon thousands of instances.
For a long time, for ten years, the contrary was boldly and brazenly
asserted. This nation is fond of quackery of all sorts; and this particular
quackery having been sanctioned by King, Lords and Commons, it spread
over the country like a pestilence borne by the winds. Speedily sprang up
the 'ROYAL Jennerian Institution,' and Branch Institutions, issuing from
the parent trunk, set instantly to work, impregnating the veins of the rising
and enlightened generation with the beastly matter. 'Gentlemen and Ladies'
made the commodity a pocket-companion; and if a cottager's child (in
Hampshire at least), even seen by them, on a common, were not pretty
quick in taking to its heels, it had to carry off more or less of the disease of
the cow. One would have thought, that one-half of the cows in England
must have been tapped to get at such a quantity of the stuff.
263. In the midst of all this mad work, to which the doctors, after having
found it in vain to resist, had yielded, the real small-pox, in its worst form,
broke out in the town of RINGWOOD, in HAMPSHIRE, and carried off, I
believe (I have not the account at hand), more than a hundred persons,
young and old, every one of whom had had the cow-pox 'so nicely!' And
what was now said? Was the quackery exploded, and were the granters of

the twenty thousand pounds ashamed of what they had done? Not at all: the
failure was imputed to unskilful operators; to the staleness of the matter; to
its not being of the genuine quality. Admitting all this, the scheme stood
condemned; for the great advantages held forth were, that any body might
perform the operation, and that the matter was every where abundant and
cost-free. But these were paltry excuses; the mere shuffles of quackery; for
what do we know now? Why, that in hundreds of instances, persons cow-
poxed by JENNER HIMSELF, have taken the real small-pox afterwards,
and have either died from the disorder, or narrowly escaped with their lives!
I will mention two instances, the parties concerned being living and well-
known, one of them to the whole nation, and the other to a very numerous
circle in the higher walks of life. The first is Sir RICHARD PHILLIPS, so
well known by his able writings, and equally well known by his exemplary
conduct as Sheriff of London, and by his life-long labours in the cause of
real charity and humanity. Sir Richard had, I think, two sons, whose veins
were impregnated by the grantee himself. At any rate he had one, who had,
several years after Jenner had given him the insuring matter, a very hard
struggle for his life, under the hands of the good, old-fashioned, seam-
giving, and dimple-dipping small-pox. The second is PHILIP CODD, Esq.,
formerly of Kensington, and now of Rumsted Court, near Maidstone, in
Kent, who has a son that had a very narrow escape under the real small-pox,
about four years ago, and who also had been cow-poxed by Jenner himself.
This last-mentioned gentleman I have known, and most sincerely respected,
from the time of our both being about eighteen years of age. When the
young gentleman, of whom I am now speaking, was very young, I having
him upon my knee one day, asked his kind and excellent mother, whether he
had been inoculated. 'Oh, no!' said she, 'we are going to have him
vaccinated.' Whereupon I, going into the garden to the father, said, 'I do
hope, Codd, that you are not going to have that beastly cow-stuff put into
that fine boy.' 'Why,' said he, 'you see, Cobbett, it is to be done by Jenner
himself.' What answer I gave, what names and epithets I bestowed upon
Jenner and his quackery, I will leave the reader to imagine.
264. Now, here are instances enough; but, every reader has heard of, if not
seen, scores of others. Young Mr. Codd caught the small-pox at a school;
and if I recollect rightly, there were several other 'vaccinated' youths who
did the same, at the same time. Quackery, however, has always a shuffle

left. Now that the cow-pox has been proved to be no guarantee against the
small-pox, it makes it' milder' when it comes! A pretty shuffle, indeed, this!
You are to be all your life in fear of it, having as your sole consolation, that
when it comes (and it may overtake you in a camp, or on the seas), it will
be 'milder!' It was not too mild to kill at RINGWOOD; and its mildness, in
case of young Mr. Codd, did not restrain it from blinding him for a suitable
number of days. I shall not easily forget the alarm and anxiety of the father
and mother upon this occasion; both of them the best of parents, and both of
them now punished for having yielded to this fashionable quackery. I will
not say, justly punished; for affection for their children, in which respect
they were never surpassed by any parents on earth, was the cause of their
listening to the danger-obviating quackery. This, too, is the case with other
parents; but parents should be under the influence of reason and experience,
as well as under that of affection; and now, at any rate, they ought to set this
really dangerous quackery at nought.

265. And, what does my own experience say on the other side? There are
my seven children, the sons as tall, or nearly so, as their father, and the
daughters as tall as their mother; all, in due succession, inoculated with the
good old-fashioned face-tearing small-pox; neither of them with a single
mark of that disease on their skins; neither of them having been, that we
could perceive, ill for a single hour, in consequence of the inoculation.
When we were in the United States, we observed that the Americans were
never marked with the small-pox; or, if such a thing were seen, it was very
rarely. The cause we found to be, the universal practice of having the
children inoculated at the breast, and, generally, at a month or six weeks
old. When we came to have children, we did the same. I believe that some
of ours have been a few months old when the operation has been
performed, but always while at the breast, and as early as possible after the
expiration of six weeks from the birth; sometimes put off a little while by
some slight disorder in the child, or on account of some circumstance or
other; but, with these exceptions, done at, or before, the end of six weeks
from the birth, and always at the breast. All is then pure: there is nothing in
either body or mind to favour the natural fury of the disease. We always
took particular care about the source from which the infectious matter
came. We employed medical men, in whom we could place perfect
confidence: we had their solemn word for the matter coming from some
healthy child; and, at last, we had sometimes to wait for this, the cow-affair
having rendered patients of this sort rather rare.
266. While the child has the small-pox, the mother should abstain from food
and drink, which she may require at other times, but which might be too
gross just now. To suckle a hearty child requires good living; for, besides
that this is necessary to the mother, it is also necessary to the child. A little
forbearance, just at this time, is prudent; making the diet as simple as
possible, and avoiding all violent agitation either of the body or the spirits;
avoiding too, if you can, very hot or very cold weather.
267. There is now, however, this inconvenience, that the far greater part of
the present young women have been be-Jennered; so that they may catch
the beauty-killing disease from their babies! To hearten them up, however,
and more especially, I confess, to record a trait of maternal affection and of
female heroism, which I have never heard of any thing to surpass, I have

the pride to say, that my wife had eight children inoculated at her breast,
and never had the small-pox in her life. I, at first, objected to the inoculating
of the child, but she insisted upon it, and with so much pertinacity that I
gave way, on condition that she would be inoculated too. This was done
with three or four of the children, I think, she always being reluctant to have
it done, saying that it looked like distrusting the goodness of God. There
was, to be sure, very little in this argument; but the long experience wore
away the alarm; and there she is now, having had eight children hanging at
her breast with that desolating disease in them, and she never having been
affected by it from first to last. All her children knew, of course, the risk that
she voluntarily incurred for them. They all have this indubitable proof, that
she valued their lives above her own; and is it in nature, that they should
ever wilfully do any thing to wound the heart of that mother; and must not
her bright example have great effect on their character and conduct! Now,
my opinion is, that the far greater part of English or American women, if
placed in the above circumstances, would do just the same thing; and I do
hope, that those, who have yet to be mothers, will seriously think of putting
an end, as they have the power to do, to the disgraceful and dangerous
quackery, the evils of which I have so fully proved.
268. But there is, in the management of babies, something besides life,
health, strength and beauty; and something too, without which all these put
together are nothing worth; and that is sanity of mind. There are, owing to
various causes, some who are born ideots; but a great many more become
insane from the misconduct, or neglect, of parents; and, generally, from the
children being committed to the care of servants. I knew, in Pennsylvania, a
child, as fine, and as sprightly, and as intelligent a child as ever was born,
made an ideot for life by being, when about three years old, shut into a dark
closet, by a maid servant, in order to terrify it into silence. The thoughtless
creature first menaced it with sending it to 'the bad place,' as the phrase is
there; and, at last, to reduce it to silence, put it into the closet, shut the door,
and went out of the room. She went back, in a few minutes, and found the
child in a fit. It recovered from that, but was for life an ideot. When the
parents, who had been out two days and two nights on a visit of pleasure,
came home, they were told that the child had had a fit; but, they were not
told the cause. The girl, however, who was a neighbour's daughter, being on
her death-bed about ten years afterwards, could not die in peace without

sending for the mother of the child (now become a young man) and asking
forgiveness of her. The mother herself was, however, the greatest offender
of the two: a whole lifetime of sorrow and of mortification was a
punishment too light for her and her husband. Thousands upon thousands of
human beings have been deprived of their senses by these and similar
means.
269. It is not long since that we read, in the newspapers, of a child being
absolutely killed, at Birmingham, I think it was, by being thus frightened.
The parents had gone out into what is called an evening party. The servants,
naturally enough, had their party at home; and the mistress, who, by some
unexpected accident, had been brought home at an early hour, finding the
parlour full of company, ran up stairs to see about her child, about two or
three years old. She found it with its eyes open, but fixed; touching it, she
found it inanimate. The doctor was sent for in vain: it was quite dead. The
maid affected to know nothing of the cause; but some one of the parties
assembled discovered, pinned up to the curtains of the bed, a horrid figure,
made up partly of a frightful mask! This, as the wretched girl confessed,
had been done to keep the child quiet, while she was with her company
below. When one reflects on the anguish that the poor little thing must have
endured, before the life was quite frightened out of it, one can find no terms
sufficiently strong to express the abhorrence due to the perpetrator of this
crime, which was, in fact, a cruel murder; and, if it was beyond the reach of
the law, it was so and is so, because, as in the cases of parricide, the law, in
making no provision for punishment peculiarly severe, has, out of respect to
human nature, supposed such crimes to be impossible. But if the girl was
criminal; if death, or a life of remorse, was her due, what was the due of her
parents, and especially of the mother! And what was the due of the father,
who suffered that mother, and who, perhaps, tempted her to neglect her
most sacred duty!
270. If this poor child had been deprived of its mental faculties, instead of
being deprived of its life, the cause would, in all likelihood, never have
been discovered. The insanity would have been ascribed to 'brain-fever,' or
to some other of the usual causes of insanity; or, as in thousands upon
thousands of instances, to some unaccountable cause. When I was, in No.
IX., paragraphs from 227 to 233, both inclusive, maintaining with all my
might, the unalienable right of the child to the milk of its mother, I omitted,

amongst the evils arising from banishing the child from the mother's breast,
to mention, or, rather, it had never occurred to me to mention, the loss of
reason to the poor, innocent creatures, thus banished. And now, as
connected with this measure, I have an argument of experience, enough to
terrify every young man and woman upon earth from the thought of
committing this offence against nature. I wrote No. IX. at CAMBRIDGE,
on Sunday, the 28th of March; and before I quitted SHREWSBURY, on the
14th of May, the following facts reached my ears. A very respectable
tradesman, who, with his wife, have led a most industrious life, in a town
that it is not necessary to name, said to a gentleman that told it to me: 'I
wish to God I had read No. IX. of Mr. Cobbett's ADVICE TO YOUNG
MEN fifteen years ago!' He then related, that he had had ten children, all
put out to be suckled, in consequence of the necessity of his having the
mother's assistance to carry on his business; and that two out of the ten had
come home ideots; though the rest were all sane, and though insanity had
never been known in the family of either father or mother! These parents,
whom I myself saw, are very clever people, and the wife singularly
industrious and expert in her affairs.
271. Now the motive, in this case, unquestionably was good; it was that the
mother's valuable time might, as much as possible, be devoted to the
earning of a competence for her children. But, alas! what is this competence
to these two unfortunate beings! And what is the competence to the rest,
when put in the scale against the mortification that they must, all their lives,
suffer on account of the insanity of their brother and sister, exciting, as it
must, in all their circle, and even in themselves, suspicions of their own
perfect soundness of mind! When weighed against this consideration, what
is all the wealth in the world! And as to the parents, where are they to find
compensation for such a calamity, embittered additionally, too, by the
reflection, that it was in their power to prevent it, and that nature, with loud
voice, cried out to them to prevent it! MONEY! Wealth acquired in
consequence of this banishment of these poor children; these victims of
this, I will not call it avarice, but over-eager love of gain! wealth, thus
acquired! What wealth can console these parents for the loss of reason in
these children! Where is the father and the mother, who would not rather
see their children ploughing in other men's fields, and sweeping other men's

houses, than led about parks or houses of their own, objects of pity even of
the menials procured by their wealth?
272. If what I have now said be not sufficient to deter a man from suffering
any consideration, no matter what, to induce him to delegate the care of his
children, when very young, to any body whomsoever, nothing that I can say
can possibly have that effect; and I will, therefore, now proceed to offer my
advice with regard to the management of children when they get beyond the
danger of being crazed or killed by nurses or servants.
273. We here come to the subject of education in the true sense of that
word, which is rearing up, seeing that the word comes from the Latin
educo, which means to breed up, or to rear up. I shall, afterwards, have to
speak of education in the now common acceptation of the word, which
makes it mean, book-learning. At present, I am to speak of education in its
true sense, as the French (who, as well as we, take the word from the Latin)
always use it. They, in their agricultural works, talk of the 'éducation du
Cochon, de l'Alouette, &c.,' that is of the hog, the lark, and so of other
animals; that is to say, of the manner of breeding them, or rearing them up,
from their being little things till they be of full size.
274. The first thing, in the rearing of children, who have passed from the
baby-state, is, as to the body, plenty of good food; and, as to the mind,
constant good example in the parents. Of the latter I shall speak more by-
and-by. With regard to the former, it is of the greatest importance, that
children be well fed; and there never was a greater error than to believe that
they do not need good food. Every one knows, that to have fine horses, the
colts must be kept well, and that it is the same with regard to all animals of
every sort and kind. The fine horses and cattle and sheep all come from the
rich pastures. To have them fine, it is not sufficient that they have plenty of
food when young, but that they have rich food. Were there no land, no
pasture, in England, but such as is found in Middlesex, Essex, and Surrey,
we should see none of those coach-horses and dray-horses, whose height
and size make us stare. It is the keep when young that makes the fine
animal.
275. There is no other reason for the people in the American States being
generally so much taller and stronger than the people in England are. Their

forefathers went, for the greater part, from England. In the four Northern
States they went wholly from England, and then, on their landing, they
founded a new London, a new Falmouth, a new Plymouth, a new
Portsmouth, a new Dover, a new Yarmouth, a new Lynn, a new Boston, and
a new Hull, and the country itself they called, and their descendants still
call, NEW ENGLAND. This country of the best and boldest seamen, and of
the most moral and happy people in the world, is also the country of the
tallest and ablest-bodied men in the world. And why? Because, from their
very birth, they have an abundance of good food; not only of food, but of
rich food. Even when the child is at the breast, a strip of beef-stake, or
something of that description, as big and as long as one's finger, is put into
its hand. When a baby gets a thing in its hand, the first thing it does is to
poke some part of it into its mouth. It cannot bite the meat, but its gums
squeeze out the juice. When it has done with the breast, it eats meat
constantly twice, if not thrice, a day. And this abundance of good food is the
cause, to be sure, of the superior size and strength of the people of that
country.
276. Nor is this, in any point of view, an unimportant matter. A tall man is,
whether as labourer, carpenter, bricklayer, soldier or sailor, or almost
anything else, worth more than a short man: he can look over a higher
thing; he can reach higher and wider; he can move on from place to place
faster; in mowing grass or corn he takes a wider swarth, in pitching he
wants a shorter prong; in making buildings he does not so soon want a
ladder or a scaffold; in fighting he keeps his body farther from the point of
his sword. To be sure, a man may be tall and weak; but, this is the exception
and not the rule: height and weight and strength, in men as in speechless
animals, generally go together. Aye, and in enterprise and courage too, the
powers of the body have a great deal to do. Doubtless there are, have been,
and always will be, great numbers of small and enterprizing and brave men;
but it is not in nature, that, generally speaking, those who are conscious of
their inferiority in point of bodily strength, should possess the boldness of
those who have a contrary description.
277. To what but this difference in the size and strength of the opposing
combatants are we to ascribe the ever-to-be-blushed-at events of our last
war against the United States! The hearts of our seamen and soldiers were
as good as those of the Yankees: on both sides they had sprung from the

same stock: on both sides equally well supplied with all the materials of
war: if on either side, the superior skill was on ours: French, Dutch,
Spaniards, all had confessed our superior prowess: yet, when, with our
whole undivided strength, and to that strength adding the flush and pride of
victory and conquest, crowned even in the capital of France; when, with all
these tremendous advantages, and with all the nations of the earth looking
on, we came foot to foot and yard-arm to yard-arm with the Americans, the
result was such as an English pen refuses to describe. What, then, was the
great cause of this result, which filled us with shame and the world with
astonishment? Not the want of courage in our men. There were, indeed,
some moral causes at work; but the main cause was, the great superiority of
size and of bodily strength on the part of the enemy's soldiers and sailors. It
was so many men on each side; but it was men of a different size and
strength; and, on the side of the foe, men accustomed to daring enterprise
from a consciousness of that strength.
278. Why are abstinence and fasting enjoined by the Catholic Church?
Why, to make men humble, meek, and tame; and they have this effect too:
this is visible in whole nations as well as in individuals. So that good food,
and plenty of it, is not more necessary to the forming of a stout and able
body than to the forming of an active and enterprizing spirit. Poor food,
short allowance, while they check the growth of the child's body, check also
the daring of the mind; and, therefore, the starving or pinching system
ought to be avoided by all means. Children should eat often, and as much as
they like at a time. They will, if at full heap, never take, of plain food, more
than it is good for them to take. They may, indeed, be stuffed with cakes
and sweet things till they be ill, and, indeed, until they bring on dangerous
disorders: but, of meat plainly and well cooked, and of bread, they will
never swallow the tenth part of an ounce more than it is necessary for them
to swallow. Ripe fruit, or cooked fruit, if no sweetening take place, will
never hurt them; but, when they once get a taste for sugary stuff, and to
cram down loads of garden vegetables; when ices, creams, tarts, raisins,
almonds, all the endless pamperings come, the doctor must soon follow
with his drugs. The blowing out of the bodies of children with tea, coffee,
soup, or warm liquids of any kind, is very bad: these have an effect
precisely like that which is produced by feeding young rabbits, or pigs, or
other young animals upon watery vegetables: it makes them big-bellied and

bare-boned at the same time; and it effectually prevents the frame from
becoming strong. Children in health want no drink other than skim milk, or
butter-milk, or whey; and, if none of those be at hand, water will do very
well, provided they have plenty of good meat. Cheese and butter do very
well for part of the day. Puddings and pies; but always without sugar,
which, say what people will about the wholesomeness of it, is not only of no
use in the rearing of children, but injurious: it forces an appetite: like strong
drink, it makes daily encroachments on the taste: it wheedles down that
which the stomach does not want: it finally produces illness: it is one of the
curses of the country; for it, by taking off the bitter of the tea and coffee, is
the great cause of sending down into the stomach those quantities of warm
water by which the body is debilitated and deformed and the mind
enfeebled. I am addressing myself to persons in the middle walk of life; but
no parent can be sure that his child will not be compelled to labour hard for
its daily bread: and then, how vast is the difference between one who has
been pampered with sweets and one who has been reared on plain food and
simple drink!
279. The next thing after good and plentiful and plain food is good air. This
is not within the reach of every one; but, to obtain it is worth great
sacrifices in other respects. We know that there are smells which will cause
instant death; we know, that there are others which will cause death in a few
years; and, therefore, we know that it is the duty of parents to provide, if
possible, against this danger to the health of their offspring. To be sure,
when a man is so situated that he cannot give his children sweet air without
putting himself into a jail for debt: when, in short, he has the dire choice of
sickly children, children with big heads, small limbs, and ricketty joints: or
children sent to the poor-house: when this is his hard lot, he must decide for
the former sad alternative: but before he will convince me that this is his lot,
he must prove to me, that he and his wife expend not a penny in the
decoration of their persons; that on his table, morning, noon, or night,
nothing ever comes that is not the produce of English soil; that of his time
not one hour is wasted in what is called pleasure; that down his throat not
one drop or morsel ever goes, unless necessary to sustain life and health.
How many scores and how many hundreds of men have I seen; how many
thousands could I go and point out, to-morrow, in London, the money
expended on whose guzzlings in porter, grog and wine, would keep, and

keep well, in the country, a considerable part of the year, a wife surrounded
by healthy children, instead of being stewed up in some alley, or back room,
with a parcel of poor creatures about her, whom she, though their fond
mother, is almost ashamed to call hers! Compared with the life of such a
woman, that of the labourer, however poor, is paradise. Tell me not of the
necessity of providing money for them, even if you waste not a farthing: you
can provide them with no money equal in value to health and straight limbs
and good looks: these it is, if within your power, your bounden duty to
provide for them: as to providing them with money, you deceive yourself; it
is your own avarice, or vanity, that you are seeking to gratify, and not to
ensure the good of your children. Their most precious possession is health
and strength; and you have no right to run the risk of depriving them of
these for the sake of heaping together money to bestow on them: you have
the desire to see them rich: it is to gratify yourself that you act in such a
case; and you, however you may deceive yourself, are guilty of injustice
towards them. You would be ashamed to see them without fortune; but not
at all ashamed to see them without straight limbs, without colour in their
cheeks, without strength, without activity, and with only half their due
portion of reason.
280. Besides sweet air, children want exercise. Even when they are babies
in arms, they want tossing and pulling about, and want talking and singing
to. They should be put upon their feet by slow degrees, according to the
strength of their legs; and this is a matter which a good mother will attend
to with incessant care. If they appear to be likely to squint, she will, always
when they wake up, and frequently in the day, take care to present some
pleasing object right before, and never on the side of their face. If they
appear, when they begin to talk, to indicate a propensity to stammer, she
will stop them, repeat the word or words slowly herself, and get them to do
the same. These precautions are amongst the most sacred of the duties of
parents; for, remember, the deformity is for life; a thought which will fill
every good parent's heart with solicitude. All swaddling and tight covering
are mischievous. They produce distortions of some sort or other. To let
children creep and roll about till they get upon their legs of themselves is a
very good way. I never saw a native American with crooked limbs or hump-
back, and never heard any man say that he had seen one. And the reason is,
doubtless, the loose dress in which children, from the moment of their birth,

are kept, the good food that they always have, and the sweet air that they
breathe in consequence of the absence of all dread of poverty on the part of
the parents.
281. As to bodily exercise, they will, when they begin to get about, take, if
you let them alone, just as much of it as nature bids them, and no more.
That is a pretty deal, indeed, if they be in health; and, it is your duty, now, to
provide for their taking of that exercise, when they begin to be what are
called boys and girls, in a way that shall tend to give them the greatest
degree of pleasure, accompanied with the smallest risk of pain: in other
words, to make their lives as pleasant as you possibly can. I have always
admired the sentiment of ROUSSEAU upon this subject. 'The boy dies,
perhaps, at the age of ten or twelve. Of what use, then, all the restraints, all
the privations, all the pain, that you have inflicted upon him? He falls, and
leaves your mind to brood over the possibility of your having abridged a
life so dear to you.' I do not recollect the very words; but the passage made
a deep impression upon my mind, just at the time, too, when I was about to
become a father; and I was resolved never to bring upon myself remorse
from such a cause; a resolution from which no importunities, coming from
what quarter they might, ever induced me, in one single instance, or for one
single moment, to depart. I was resolved to forego all the means of making
money, all the means of living in any thing like fashion, all the means of
obtaining fame or distinction, to give up every thing, to become a common
labourer, rather than make my children lead a life of restraint and rebuke; I
could not be sure that my children would love me as they loved their own
lives; but I was, at any rate, resolved to deserve such love at their hands;
and, in possession of that, I felt that I could set calamity, of whatever
description, at defiance.
282. Now, proceeding to relate what was, in this respect, my line of
conduct, I am not pretending that every man, and particularly every man
living in a town, can, in all respects, do as I did in the rearing up of
children. But, in many respects, any man may, whatever may be his state of
life. For I did not lead an idle life; I had to work constantly for the means of
living; my occupation required unremitted attention; I had nothing but my
labour to rely on; and I had no friend, to whom, in case of need, I could fly
for assistance: I always saw the possibility, and even the probability, of
being totally ruined by the hand of power; but, happen what would, I was

resolved, that, as long as I could cause them to do it, my children should
lead happy lives; and happy lives they did lead, if ever children did in this
whole world.
283. The first thing that I did, when the fourth child had come, was to get
into the country, and so far as to render a going backward and forward to
London, at short intervals, quite out of the question. Thus was health, the
greatest of all things, provided for, as far as I was able to make the
provision. Next, my being always at home was secured as far as possible;
always with them to set an example of early rising, sobriety, and application
to something or other. Children, and especially boys, will have some out-of-
door pursuits; and it was my duty to lead them to choose such pursuits as
combined future utility with present innocence. Each his flower-bed, little
garden, plantation of trees; rabbits, dogs, asses, horses, pheasants and hares;
hoes, spades, whips, guns; always some object of lively interest, and as
much earnestness and bustle about the various objects as if our living had
solely depended upon them. I made everything give way to the great object
of making their lives happy and innocent. I did not know what they might
be in time, or what might be my lot; but I was resolved not to be the cause
of their being unhappy then, let what might become of us afterwards. I was,
as I am, of opinion, that it is injurious to the mind to press book-learning
upon it at an early age: I always felt pain for poor little things, set up,
before 'company,' to repeat verses, or bits of plays, at six or eight years old.
I have sometimes not known which way to look, when a mother (and, too
often, a father), whom I could not but respect on account of her fondness
for her child, has forced the feeble-voiced eighth wonder of the world, to
stand with its little hand stretched out, spouting the soliloquy of Hamlet, or
some such thing. I remember, on one occasion, a little pale-faced creature,
only five years old, was brought in, after the feeding part of the dinner was
over, first to take his regular half-glass of vintner's brewings, commonly
called wine, and then to treat us to a display of his wonderful genius. The
subject was a speech of a robust and bold youth, in a Scotch play, the title
of which I have forgotten, but the speech began with, 'My name is Norval:
on the Grampian Hills my father fed his flocks...' And this in a voice so
weak and distressing as to put me in mind of the plaintive squeaking of
little pigs when the sow is lying on them. As we were going home (one of
my boys and I) he, after a silence of half a mile perhaps, rode up close to

the side of my horse, and said, 'Papa, where be the Grampian Hills?' 'Oh,'
said I, 'they are in Scotland; poor, barren, beggarly places, covered with
heath and rushes, ten times as barren as Sherril Heath.' 'But,' said he, 'how
could that little boy's father feed his flocks there, then?' I was ready to
tumble off the horse with laughing.
284. I do not know any thing much more distressing to the spectators than
exhibitions of this sort. Every one feels, not for the child, for it is insensible
to the uneasiness it excites, but for the parents, whose amiable fondness
displays itself in this ridiculous manner. Upon these occasions, no one
knows what to say, or whither to direct his looks. The parents, and
especially the fond mother, looks sharply round for the so-evidently merited
applause, as an actor of the name of MUNDEN, whom I recollect thirty
years ago, used, when he had treated us to a witty shrug of his shoulders, or
twist of his chin, to turn his face up to the gallery for the clap. If I had to
declare on my oath which have been the most disagreeable moments of my
life, I verily believe, that, after due consideration, I should fix upon those,
in which parents, whom I have respected, have made me endure exhibitions
like these; for, this is your choice, to be insincere, or to give offence.
285. And, as towards the child, it is to be unjust, thus to teach it to set a high
value on trifling, not to say mischievous, attainments; to make it, whether it
be in its natural disposition or not, vain and conceited. The plaudits which it
receives, in such cases, puffs it up in its own thoughts, sends it out into the
world stuffed with pride and insolence, which must and will be extracted
out of it by one means or another; and none but those who have had to
endure the drawing of firmly-fixed teeth, can, I take it, have an adequate
idea of the painfulness of this operation. Now, parents have no right thus to
indulge their own feelings at the risk of the happiness of their children.
286. The great matter is, however, the spoiling of the mind by forcing on it
thoughts which it is not fit to receive. We know well, we daily see, that in
men, as well as in other animals, the body is rendered comparatively small
and feeble by being heavily loaded, or hard worked, before it arrive at size
and strength proportioned to such load and such work. It is just so with the
mind: the attempt to put old heads upon young shoulders is just as
unreasonable as it would be to expect a colt six months old to be able to
carry a man. The mind, as well as the body, requires time to come to its

strength; and the way to have it possess, at last, its natural strength, is not to
attempt to load it too soon; and to favour it in its progress by giving to the
body good and plentiful food, sweet air, and abundant exercise,
accompanied with as little discontent or uneasiness as possible. It is
universally known, that ailments of the body are, in many cases, sufficient
to destroy the mind, and to debilitate it in innumerable instances. It is
equally well known, that the torments of the mind are, in many cases,
sufficient to destroy the body. This, then, being so well known, is it not the
first duty of a father to secure to his children, if possible, sound and strong
bodies? LORD BACON says, that 'a sound mind in a sound body is the
greatest of God's blessings.' To see his children possess these, therefore,
ought to be the first object with every father; an object which I cannot too
often endeavour to fix in his mind.
287. I am to speak presently of that sort of learning which is derived from
books, and which is a matter by no means to be neglected, or to be thought
little of, seeing that it is the road, not only to fame, but to the means of
doing great good to one's neighbours and to one's country, and, thereby, of
adding to those pleasant feelings which are, in other words, our happiness.
But, notwithstanding this, I must here insist, and endeavour to impress my
opinion upon the mind of every father, that his children's happiness ought to
be first object; that book-learning, if it tend to militate against this, ought to
be disregarded; and that, as to money, as to fortune, as to rank and title, that
father who can, in the destination of his children, think of them more than
of the happiness of those children, is, if he be of sane mind, a great
criminal. Who is there, having lived to the age of thirty, or even twenty,
years, and having the ordinary capacity for observation; who is there, being
of this description, who must not be convinced of the inadequacy of riches
and what are called honours to insure happiness? Who, amongst all the
classes of men, experience, on an average, so little of real pleasure, and so
much of real pain as the rich and the lofty? Pope gives us, as the materials
for happiness, 'health, peace, and competence.' Aye, but what is peace, and
what is competence? If, by peace, he mean that tranquillity of mind which
innocence and good deeds produce, he is right and clear so far; for we all
know that, without health, which has a well-known positive meaning, there
can be no happiness. But competence is a word of unfixed meaning. It may,
with some, mean enough to eat, drink, wear and be lodged and warmed

with; but, with others, it may include horses, carriages, and footmen laced
over from top to toe. So that, here, we have no guide; no standard; and,
indeed, there can be none. But as every sensible father must know that the
possession of riches do not, never did, and never can, afford even a chance
of additional happiness, it is his duty to inculcate in the minds of his
children to make no sacrifice of principle, of moral obligation of any sort, in
order to obtain riches, or distinction; and it is a duty still more imperative
on him, not to expose them to the risk of loss of health, or diminution of
strength, for purposes which have, either directly or indirectly, the acquiring
of riches in view, whether for himself or for them.
288. With these principles immoveably implanted in my mind, I became the
father of a family, and on these principles I have reared that family. Being
myself fond of book-learning, and knowing well its powers, I naturally
wished them to possess it too; but never did I impose it upon any one of
them. My first duty was to make them healthy and strong if I could, and to
give them as much enjoyment of life as possible. Born and bred up in the
sweet air myself, I was resolved that they should be bred up in it too.
Enjoying rural scenes and sports, as I had done, when a boy, as much as any
one that ever was born, I was resolved, that they should have the same
enjoyments tendered to them. When I was a very little boy, I was, in the
barley-sowing season, going along by the side of a field, near WAVERLY
ABBEY; the primroses and blue-bells bespangling the banks on both sides
of me; a thousand linnets singing in a spreading oak over my head; while
the jingle of the traces and the whistling of the ploughboys saluted my ear
from over the hedge; and, as it were to snatch me from the enchantment, the
hounds, at that instant, having started a hare in the hanger on the other side
of the field, came up scampering over it in full cry, taking me after them
many a mile. I was not more than eight years old; but this particular scene
has presented itself to my mind many times every year from that day to this.
I always enjoy it over again; and I was resolved to give, if possible, the
same enjoyments to my children.
289. Men's circumstances are so various; there is such a great variety in
their situations in life, their business, the extent of their pecuniary means,
the local state in which they are placed, their internal resources; the variety
in all these respects is so great, that, as applicable to every family, it would
be impossible to lay down any set of rules, or maxims, touching every

matter relating to the management and rearing up of children. In giving an
account, therefore, of my own conduct, in this respect, I am not to be
understood as supposing, that every father can, or ought, to attempt to do
the same; but while it will be seen, that there are many, and these the most
important parts of that conduct, that all fathers may imitate, if they choose,
there is no part of it which thousands and thousands of fathers might not
adopt and pursue, and adhere to, to the very letter.
290. I effected every thing without scolding, and even without command.
My children are a family of scholars, each sex its appropriate species of
learning; and, I could safely take my oath, that I never ordered a child of
mine, son or daughter, to look into a book, in my life. My two eldest sons,
when about eight years old, were, for the sake of their health, placed for a
very short time, at a Clergyman's at MICHELDEVER, and my eldest
daughter, a little older, at a school a few miles from Botley, to avoid taking
them to London in the winter. But, with these exceptions, never had they,
while children, teacher of any description; and I never, and nobody else
ever, taught any one of them to read, write, or any thing else, except in
conversation; and, yet, no man was ever more anxious to be the father of a
family of clever and learned persons.
291. I accomplished my purpose indirectly. The first thing of all was health,
which was secured by the deeply-interesting and never-ending sports of the
field and pleasures of the garden. Luckily these things were treated of in
books and pictures of endless variety; so that on wet days, in long evenings,
these came into play. A large, strong table, in the middle of the room, their
mother sitting at her work, used to be surrounded with them, the baby, if big
enough, set up in a high chair. Here were ink-stands, pens, pencils, India
rubber, and paper, all in abundance, and every one scrabbled about as he or
she pleased. There were prints of animals of all sorts; books treating of
them: others treating of gardening, of flowers, of husbandry, of hunting,
coursing, shooting, fishing, planting, and, in short, of every thing, with
regard to which we had something to do. One would be trying to imitate a
bit of my writing, another drawing the pictures of some of our dogs or
horses, a third poking over Bewick's Quadrupeds and picking out what he
said about them; but our book of never-failing resource was the French
MAISON RUSTIQUE, or FARM-HOUSE, which, it is said, was the book
that first tempted DUQUESNOIS (I think that was the name), the famous

physician, in the reign of Louis XIV., to learn to read. Here are all the four-
legged animals, from the horse down to the mouse, portraits and all; all the
birds, reptiles, insects; all the modes of rearing, managing, and using the
tame ones; all the modes of taking the wild ones, and of destroying those
that are mischievous; all the various traps, springs, nets; all the implements
of husbandry and gardening; all the labours of the field and the garden
exhibited, as well as the rest, in plates; and, there was I, in my leisure
moments, to join this inquisitive group, to read the French, and tell them
what it meaned in English, when the picture did not sufficiently explain
itself. I never have been without a copy of this book for forty years, except
during the time that I was fleeing from the dungeons of CASTLEREAGH
and SIDMOUTH, in 1817; and, when I got to Long Island, the first book I
bought was another MAISON RUSTIQUE.
292. What need had we of schools? What need of teachers? What need of
scolding and force, to induce children to read, write, and love books? What
need of cards, dice, or of any games, to 'kill time;' but, in fact, to implant in
the infant heart a love of gaming, one of the most destructive of all human
vices? We did not want to 'kill time;' we were always busy, wet weather or
dry weather, winter or summer. There was no force in any case; no
command; no authority; none of these was ever wanted. To teach the
children the habit of early rising was a great object; and every one knows
how young people cling to their beds, and how loth they are to go to those
beds. This was a capital matter; because, here were industry and health both
at stake. Yet, I avoided command even here; and merely offered a reward.
The child that was down stairs first, was called the LARK for that day; and,
further, sat at my right hand at dinner. They soon discovered, that to rise
early, they must go to bed early; and thus was this most important object
secured, with regard to girls as well as boys. Nothing more inconvenient,
and, indeed, more disgusting, than to have to do with girls, or young
women, who lounge in bed: 'A little more sleep, a little more slumber, a
little more folding of the hands to sleep.' SOLOMON knew them well: he
had, I dare say, seen the breakfast cooling, carriages and horses and servants
waiting, the sun coming burning on, the day wasting, the night growing
dark too early, appointments broken, and the objects of journeys defeated;
and all this from the lolloping in bed of persons who ought to have risen
with the sun. No beauty, no modesty, no accomplishments, are a

compensation for the effects of laziness in women; and, of all the proofs of
laziness, none is so unequivocal as that of lying late in bed. Love makes
men overlook this vice (for it is a vice), for a while; but, this does not last
for life. Besides, health demands early rising: the management of a house
imperiously demands it; but health, that most precious possession, without
which there is nothing else worth possessing, demands it too. The morning
air is the most wholesome and strengthening: even in crowded cities, men
might do pretty well with the aid of the morning air; but, how are they to
rise early, if they go to bed late?
293. But, to do the things I did, you must love home yourself; to rear up
children in this manner, you must live with them; you must make them, too,
feel, by your conduct, that you prefer this to any other mode of passing your
time. All men cannot lead this sort of life, but many may; and all much
more than many do. My occupation, to be sure, was chiefly carried on at
home; but, I had always enough to do; I never spent an idle week, or even
day, in my whole life. Yet I found time to talk with them, to walk, or ride,
about with them; and when forced to go from home, always took one or
more with me. You must be good-tempered too with them; they must like
your company better than any other person's; they must not wish you away,
not fear your coming back, not look upon your departure as a holiday.
When my business kept me away from the scrabbling-table, a petition often
came, that I would go and talk with the group, and the bearer generally was
the youngest, being the most likely to succeed. When I went from home, all
followed me to the outer-gate, and looked after me, till the carriage, or
horse, was out of sight. At the time appointed for my return, all were
prepared to meet me; and if it were late at night, they sat up as long as they
were able to keep their eyes open. This love of parents, and this constant
pleasure at home, made them not even think of seeking pleasure abroad;
and they, thus, were kept from vicious playmates and early corruption.
294. This is the age, too, to teach children to be trust-worthy, and to be
merciful and humane. We lived in a garden of about two acres, partly
kitchen-garden with walls, partly shrubbery and trees, and partly grass.
There were the peaches, as tempting as any that ever grew, and yet as safe
from fingers as if no child were ever in the garden. It was not necessary to
forbid. The blackbirds, the thrushes, the whitethroats, and even that very
shy bird the goldfinch, had their nests and bred up their young-ones, in

great abundance, all about this little spot, constantly the play-place of six
children; and one of the latter had its nest, and brought up its young-ones, in
a raspberry-bush, within two yards of a walk, and at the time that we were
gathering the ripe raspberries. We give dogs, and justly, great credit for
sagacity and memory; but the following two most curious instances, which
I should not venture to state, if there were not so many witnesses to the
facts, in my neighbours at Botley, as well as in my own family, will show,
that birds are not, in this respect, inferior to the canine race. All country
people know that the skylark is a very shy bird; that its abode is the open
fields: that it settles on the ground only; that it seeks safety in the wideness
of space; that it avoids enclosures, and is never seen in gardens. A part of
our ground was a grass-plat of about forty rods, or a quarter of an acre,
which, one year, was left to be mowed for hay. A pair of larks, coming out
of the fields into the middle of a pretty populous village, chose to make
their nest in the middle of this little spot, and at not more than about thirty-
five yards from one of the doors of the house, in which there were about
twelve persons living, and six of those children, who had constant access to
all parts of the ground. There we saw the cock rising up and singing, then
taking his turn upon the eggs; and by-and-by, we observed him cease to
sing, and saw them both constantly engaged in bringing food to the young
ones. No unintelligible hint to fathers and mothers of the human race, who
have, before marriage, taken delight in music. But the time came for
mowing the grass! I waited a good many days for the brood to get away;
but, at last, I determined on the day; and if the larks were there still, to leave
a patch of grass standing round them. In order not to keep them in dread
longer than necessary, I brought three able mowers, who would cut the
whole in about an hour; and as the plat was nearly circular, set them to mow
round, beginning at the outside. And now for sagacity indeed! The moment
the men began to whet their scythes, the two old larks began to flutter over
the nest, and to make a great clamour. When the men began to mow, they
flew round and round, stooping so low, when near the men, as almost to
touch their bodies, making a great chattering at the same time; but before
the men had got round with the second swarth, they flew to the nest, and
away they went, young ones and all, across the river, at the foot of the
ground, and settled in the long grass in my neighbour's orchard.

295. The other instance relates to a HOUSE-MARTEN. It is well known
that these birds build their nests under the eaves of inhabited houses, and
sometimes under those of door porches; but we had one that built its nest in
the house, and upon the top of a common doorcase, the door of which
opened into a room out of the main passage into the house. Perceiving the
marten had begun to build its nest here, we kept the front-door open in the
daytime; but were obliged to fasten it at night. It went on, had eggs, young
ones, and the young ones flew. I used to open the door in the morning early,
and then the birds carried on their affairs till night. The next year the
MARTEN came again, and had another brood in the same place. It found
its old nest; and having repaired it, and put it in order, went on again in the
former way; and it would, I dare say, have continued to come to the end of
its life, if we had remained there so long, notwithstanding there were six
healthy children in the house, making just as much noise as they pleased.
296. Now, what sagacity in these birds, to discover that those were places
of safety! And how happy must it have made us, the parents, to be sure that
our children had thus deeply imbibed habits the contrary of cruelty! For, be
it engraven on your heart, YOUNG MAN, that, whatever appearances may
say to the contrary, cruelty is always accompanied with cowardice, and also
with perfidy, when that is called for by the circumstances of the case; and
that habitual acts of cruelty to other creatures, will, nine times out of ten,
produce, when the power is possessed, cruelty to human beings. The ill-
usage of horses, and particularly asses, is a grave and a just charge against
this nation. No other nation on earth is guilty of it to the same extent. Not
only by blows, but by privation, are we cruel towards these useful, docile,
and patient creatures; and especially towards the last, which is the most
docile and patient and laborious of the two, while the food that satisfies it,
is of the coarsest and least costly kind, and in quantity so small! In the
habitual ill-treatment of this animal, which, in addition to all its labours, has
the milk taken from its young ones to administer a remedy for our ailments,
there is something that bespeaks ingratitude hardly to be described. In a
REGISTER that I wrote from Long Island, I said, that amongst all the
things of which I had been bereft, I regretted no one so much as a very
diminutive mare, on which my children had all, in succession, learned to
ride. She was become useless for them, and, indeed, for any other purpose;
but the recollection of her was so entwined with so many past

circumstances, which, at that distance, my mind conjured up, that I really
was very uneasy, lest she should fall into cruel hands. By good luck, she
was, after a while, turned out on the wide world to shift for herself; and
when we got back, and had a place for her to stand in, from her native
forest we brought her to Kensington, and she is now at Barn-Elm, about
twenty-six years old, and I dare say, as fat as a mole. Now, not only have I
no moral right (considering my ability to pay for keep) to deprive her of
life; but it would be unjust and ungrateful, in me to withhold from her
sufficient food and lodging to make life as pleasant as possible while that
life last.
297. In the meanwhile the book-learning crept in of its own accord, by
imperceptible degrees. Children naturally want to be like their parents, and
to do what they do: the boys following their father, and the girls their
mother; and as I was always writing or reading, mine naturally desired to
do something in the same way. But, at the same time, they heard no talk
from fools or drinkers; saw me with no idle, gabbling, empty companions;
saw no vain and affected coxcombs, and no tawdry and extravagant women;
saw no nasty gormandizing; and heard no gabble about play-houses and
romances and the other nonsense that fit boys to be lobby-loungers, and
girls to be the ruin of industrious and frugal young men.
298. We wanted no stimulants of this sort to keep up our spirits: our various
pleasing pursuits were quite sufficient for that; and the book-learning came
amongst the rest of the pleasures, to which it was, in some sort, necessary. I
remember that, one year, I raised a prodigious crop of fine melons, under
hand-glasses; and I learned how to do it from a gardening book; or, at least,
that book was necessary to remind me of the details. Having passed part of
an evening in talking to the boys about getting this crop, 'Come,' said I,
'now, let us read the book.' Then the book came forth, and to work we went,
following very strictly the precepts of the book. I read the thing but once,
but the eldest boy read it, perhaps, twenty times over; and explained all
about the matter to the others. Why here was a motive! Then he had to tell
the garden-labourer what to do to the melons. Now, I will engage, that more
was really learned by this single lesson, than would have been learned by
spending, at this son's age, a year at school; and he happy and delighted all
the while. When any dispute arose amongst them about hunting or shooting,
or any other of their pursuits, they, by degrees, found out the way of settling

it by reference to some book; and when any difficulty occurred, as to the
meaning, they referred to me, who, if at home, always instantly attended to
them, in these matters.
299. They began writing by taking words out of printed books; finding out
which letter was which, by asking me, or asking those who knew the letters
one from another; and by imitating bits of my writing, it is surprising how
soon they began to write a hand like mine, very small, very faint-stroked,
and nearly plain as print. The first use that any one of them made of the pen,
was to write to me, though in the same house with them. They began doing
this in mere scratches, before they knew how to make any one letter; and as
I was always folding up letters and directing them, so were they; and they
were sure to receive a prompt answer, with most encouraging compliments.
All the meddlings and teazings of friends, and, what was more serious, the
pressing prayers of their anxious mother, about sending them to school, I
withstood without the slightest effect on my resolution. As to friends,
preferring my own judgment to theirs, I did not care much; but an
expression of anxiety, implying a doubt of the soundness of my own
judgment, coming, perhaps, twenty times a day from her whose care they
were as well as mine, was not a matter to smile at, and very great trouble it
did give me. My answer at last was, as to the boys, I want them to be like
me; and as to the girls, In whose hands can they be so safe as in yours?
Therefore my resolution is taken: go to school they shall not.
300. Nothing is much more annoying than the intermeddling of friends, in a
case like this. The wife appeals to them, and 'good breeding,' that is to say,
nonsense, is sure to put them on her side. Then, they, particularly the
women, when describing the surprising progress made by their own sons at
school, used, if one of mine were present, to turn to him, and ask, to what
school he went, and what he was learning? I leave any one to judge of his
opinion of her; and whether he would like her the better for that! 'Bless me,
so tall, and not learned any thing yet!' 'Oh yes, he has,' I used to say, 'he has
learned to ride, and hunt, and shoot, and fish, and look after cattle and
sheep, and to work in the garden, and to feed his dogs, and to go from
village to village in the dark.' This was the way I used to manage with
troublesome customers of this sort. And how glad the children used to be,
when they got clear of such criticising people! And how grateful they felt to
me for the protection which they saw that I gave them against that state of

restraint, of which other people's boys complained! Go whither they might,
they found no place so pleasant as home, and no soul that came near them
affording them so many means of gratification as they received from me.
301. In this happy state we lived, until the year 1810, when the government
laid its merciless fangs upon me, dragged me from these delights, and
crammed me into a jail amongst felons; of which I shall have to speak more
fully, when, in the last Number, I come to speak of the duties of THE
CITIZEN. This added to the difficulties of my task of teaching; for now I
was snatched away from the only scene in which it could, as I thought,
properly be executed. But even these difficulties were got over. The blow
was, to be sure, a terrible one; and, oh God! how was it felt by these poor
children! It was in the month of July when the horrible sentence was passed
upon me. My wife, having left her children in the care of her good and
affectionate sister, was in London, waiting to know the doom of her
husband. When the news arrived at Botley, the three boys, one eleven,
another nine, and the other seven, years old, were hoeing cabbages in that
garden which had been the source of so much delight. When the account of
the savage sentence was brought to them, the youngest could not, for some
time, be made to understand what a jail was; and, when he did, he, all in a
tremor, exclaimed, 'Now I'm sure, William, that PAPA is not in a place like
that!' The other, in order to disguise his tears and smother his sobs, fell to
work with the hoe, and chopped about like a blind person. This account,
when it reached me, affected me more, filled me with deeper resentment,
than any other circumstance. And, oh! how I despise the wretches who talk
of my vindictiveness; of my exultation at the confusion of those who
inflicted those sufferings! How I despise the base creatures, the crawling
slaves, the callous and cowardly hypocrites, who affect to be 'shocked'
(tender souls!) at my expressions of joy, and at the death of Gibbs,
Ellenborough, Perceval, Liverpool, Canning, and the rest of the tribe that I
have already seen out, and at the fatal workings of that system, for
endeavouring to check which I was thus punished! How I despise these
wretches, and how I, above all things, enjoy their ruin, and anticipate their
utter beggary! What! I am to forgive, am I, injuries like this; and that, too,
without any atonement? Oh, no! I have not so read the Holy Scriptures; I
have not, from them, learned that I am not to rejoice at the fall of unjust
foes; and it makes a part of my happiness to be able to tell millions of men

that I do thus rejoice, and that I have the means of calling on so many just
and merciful men to rejoice along with me.
302. Now, then, the book-learning was forced upon us. I had a farm in hand.
It was necessary that I should be constantly informed of what was doing. I
gave all the orders, whether as to purchases, sales, ploughing, sowing,
breeding; in short, with regard to every thing, and the things were endless in
number and variety, and always full of interest. My eldest son and daughter
could now write well and fast. One or the other of these was always at
Botley; and I had with me (having hired the best part of the keeper's house)
one or two, besides either this brother or sister; the mother coming up to
town about once in two or three months, leaving the house and children in
the care of her sister. We had a HAMPER, with a lock and two keys, which
came up once a week, or oftener, bringing me fruit and all sorts of country
fare, for the carriage of which, cost free, I was indebted to as good a man as
ever God created, the late Mr. GEORGE ROGERS, of Southampton, who,
in the prime of life, died deeply lamented by thousands, but by none more
deeply than by me and my family, who have to thank him, and the whole of
his excellent family, for benefits and marks of kindness without number.
303. This HAMPER, which was always, at both ends of the line, looked for
with the most lively feelings, became our school. It brought me a journal of
labours, proceedings, and occurrences, written on paper of shape and size
uniform, and so contrived, as to margins, as to admit of binding. The
journal used, when my son was the writer, to be interspersed with drawings
of our dogs, colts, or any thing that he wanted me to have a correct idea of.
The hamper brought me plants, bulbs, and the like, that I might see the size
of them; and always every one sent his or her most beautiful flowers; the
earliest violets, and primroses, and cowslips, and blue-bells; the earliest
twigs of trees; and, in short, every thing that they thought calculated to
delight me. The moment the hamper arrived, I, casting aside every thing
else, set to work to answer every question, to give new directions, and to
add anything likely to give pleasure at Botley. Every hamper brought one
'letter,' as they called it, if not more, from every child; and to every letter I
wrote an answer, sealed up and sent to the party, being sure that that was
the way to produce other and better letters; for, though they could not read
what I wrote, and though their own consisted at first of mere scratches, and
afterwards, for a while, of a few words written down for them to imitate, I

always thanked them for their 'pretty letter'; and never expressed any wish
to see them write better; but took care to write in a very neat and plain hand
myself, and to do up my letter in a very neat manner.
304. Thus, while the ferocious tigers thought I was doomed to incessant
mortification, and to rage that must extinguish my mental powers, I found
in my children, and in their spotless and courageous and most affectionate
mother, delights to which the callous hearts of those tigers were strangers.
'Heaven first taught letters for some wretch's aid.' How often did this line of
Pope occur to me when I opened the little spuddling 'letters' from Botley!
This correspondence occupied a good part of my time: I had all the children
with me, turn and turn about; and, in order to give the boys exercise, and to
give the two eldest an opportunity of beginning to learn French, I used, for
a part of the two years, to send them a few hours in the day to an ABBÉ,
who lived in Castle-street, Holborn. All this was a great relaxation to my
mind; and, when I had to return to my literary labours, I returned fresh and
cheerful, full of vigour, and full of hope, of finally seeing my unjust and
merciless foes at my feet, and that, too, without caring a straw on whom
their fall might bring calamity, so that my own family were safe; because,
say what any one might, the community, taken as a whole, had suffered this
thing to be done unto us.
305. The paying of the work-people, the keeping of the accounts, the
referring to books, the writing and reading of letters; this everlasting
mixture of amusement with book-learning, made me, almost to my own
surprise, find, at the end of the two years, that I had a parcel of scholars
growing up about me; and, long before the end of the time, I had dictated
many Registers to my two eldest children. Then, there was copying out of
books, which taught spelling correctly. The calculations about the farming
affairs forced arithmetic upon us: the use, the necessity, of the thing, led to
the study. By-and-by, we had to look into the laws to know what to do about
the highways, about the game, about the poor, and all rural and parochial
affairs. I was, indeed, by the fangs of the government, defeated in my
fondly-cherished project of making my sons farmers on their own land, and
keeping them from all temptation to seek vicious and enervating
enjoyments; but those fangs, merciless as they had been, had not been able
to prevent me from laying in for their lives a store of useful information,
habits of industry, care, sobriety, and a taste for innocent, healthful, and

manly pleasures: the fangs had made me and them pennyless; but, they had
not been able to take from us our health or our mental possessions; and
these were ready for application as circumstances might ordain.
306. After the age that I have now been speaking of, fourteen, I suppose
every one became a reader and writer according to fancy. As to books, with
the exception of the Poets, I never bought, in my whole life, any one that I
did not want for some purpose of utility, and of practical utility too. I have
two or three times had the whole collection snatched away from me; and
have begun again to get them together as they were wanted. Go and kick an
ANT's nest about, and you will see the little laborious, courageous creatures
instantly set to work to get it together again; and if you do this ten times
over, ten times over they will do the same. Here is the sort of stuff that men
must be made of to oppose, with success, those who, by whatever means,
get possession of great and mischievous power.
307. Now, I am aware, that that which I did, cannot be done by every one of
hundreds of thousands of fathers, each of whom loves his children with all
his soul: I am aware that the attorney, the surgeon, the physician, the trader,
and even the farmer, cannot, generally speaking, do what I did, and that
they must, in most cases, send their sons to school, if it be necessary for
them to have book-learning. But while I say this, I know, that there are
many things, which I did, which many fathers might do, and which,
nevertheless, they do not do. It is in the power of every father to live at
home with his family, when not compelled by business, or by public duty, to
be absent: it is in his power to set an example of industry and sobriety and
frugality, and to prevent a taste for gaming, dissipation, extravagance, from
getting root in the minds of his children: it is in his power to continue to
make his children hearers, when he is reproving servants for idleness, or
commending them for industry and care: it is in his power to keep all
dissolute and idly-talking companions from his house: it is in his power to
teach them, by his uniform example, justice and mercy towards the inferior
animals: it is in his power to do many other things, and something in the
way of book-learning too, however busy his life may be. It is completely
within his power to teach them early-rising and early going to bed; and, if
many a man, who says that he has not time to teach his children, were to sit
down, in sincerity, with a pen and a bit of paper, and put down all the
minutes, which he, in every twenty-four hours, wastes over the bottle, or

over cheese and oranges and raisins and biscuits, after he has dined; how
many he lounges away, either at the coffee-house or at home, over the
useless part of newspapers; how many he spends in waiting for the coming
and the managing of the tea-table; how many he passes by candle-light,
wearied of his existence, when he might be in bed; how many he passes in
the morning in bed, while the sun and dew shine and sparkle for him in
vain: if he were to put all these together, and were to add those which he
passes in the reading of books for his mere personal amusement, and
without the smallest chance of acquiring from them any useful practical
knowledge: if he were to sum up the whole of these, and add to them the
time worse than wasted in the contemptible work of dressing off his person,
he would be frightened at the result; would send for his boys from school;
and if greater book-learning than he possessed were necessary, he would
choose for the purpose some man of ability, and see the teaching carried on
under his own roof, with safety as to morals, and with the best chance as to
health.
308. If after all, however, a school must be resorted to, let it, if in your
power, be as little populous as possible. As 'evil communications corrupt
good manners,' so the more numerous the assemblage, and the more
extensive the communication, the greater the chance of corruption. Jails,
barracks, factories, do not corrupt by their walls, but by their condensed
numbers. Populous cities corrupt from the same cause; and it is, because it
must be, the same with regard to schools, out of which children come not
what they were when they went in. The master is, in some sort, their enemy;
he is their overlooker; he is a spy upon them; his authority is maintained by
his absolute power of punishment; the parent commits them to that power;
to be taught is to be held in restraint; and, as the sparks fly upwards, the
teaching and the restraint will not be divided in the estimation of the boy.
Besides all this, there is the great disadvantage of tardiness in arriving at
years of discretion. If boys live only with boys, their ideas will continue to
be boyish; if they see and hear and converse with nobody but boys, how are
they to have the thoughts and the character of men? It is, at last, only by
hearing men talk and seeing men act, that they learn to talk and act like
men; and, therefore, to confine them to the society of boys, is to retard their
arrival at the years of discretion; and in case of adverse circumstances in the
pecuniary way, where, in all the creation, is there so helpless a mortal as a

boy who has always been at school! But, if, as I said before, a school there
must be, let the congregation be as small as possible; and, do not expect too
much from the master; for, if it be irksome to you to teach your own sons,
what must that teaching be to him? If he have great numbers, he must
delegate his authority; and, like all other delegated authority, it will either
be abused or neglected.
309. With regard to girls, one would think that mothers would want no
argument to make them shudder at the thought of committing the care of
their daughters to other hands than their own. If fortune have so favoured
them as to make them rationally desirous that their daughters should have
more of what are called accomplishments than they themselves have, it has
also favoured them with the means of having teachers under their own eye.
If it have not favoured them so highly as this (and it seldom has in the
middle rank of life), what duty so sacred as that imposed on a mother to be
the teacher of her daughters! And is she, from love of ease or of pleasure or
of any thing else, to neglect this duty; is she to commit her daughters to the
care of persons, with whose manners and morals it is impossible for her to
be thoroughly acquainted; is she to send them into the promiscuous society
of girls, who belong to nobody knows whom, and come from nobody
knows whither, and some of whom, for aught she can know to the contrary,
may have been corrupted before, and sent thither to be hidden from their
former circle; is she to send her daughters to be shut up within walls, the
bare sight of which awaken the idea of intrigue and invite to seduction and
surrender; is she to leave the health of her daughters to chance, to shut them
up with a motley bevy of strangers, some of whom, as is frequently the
case, are proclaimed bastards, by the undeniable testimony given by the
colour of their skin; is she to do all this, and still put forward pretensions to
the authority and the affection due to a mother! And, are you to permit all
this, and still call yourself a father!
310. Well, then, having resolved to teach your own children, or, to have
them taught, at home, let us now see how they ought to proceed as to books
for learning. It is evident, speaking of boys, that, at last, they must study the
art, or science, that you intend them to pursue; if they be to be surgeons,
they must read books on surgery; and the like in other cases. But, there are
certain elementary studies; certain books to be used by all persons, who are
destined to acquire any book-learning at all. Then there are departments, or

branches of knowledge, that every man in the middle rank of life, ought, if
he can, to acquire, they being, in some sort, necessary to his reputation as a
well-informed man, a character to which the farmer and the shopkeeper
ought to aspire as well as the lawyer and the surgeon. Let me now, then,
offer my advice as to the course of reading, and the manner of reading, for
a boy, arrived at his fourteenth year, that being, in my opinion, early enough
for him to begin.
311. And, first of all, whether as to boys or girls, I deprecate romances of
every description. It is impossible that they can do any good, and they may
do a great deal of harm. They excite passions that ought to lie dormant; they
give the mind a taste for highly-seasoned matter; they make matters of real
life insipid; every girl, addicted to them, sighs to be a SOPHIA WESTERN,
and every boy, a TOM JONES. What girl is not in love with the wild youth,
and what boy does not find a justification for his wildness? What can be
more pernicious than the teachings of this celebrated romance? Here are
two young men put before us, both sons of the same mother; the one a
bastard (and by a parson too), the other a legitimate child; the former wild,
disobedient, and squandering; the latter steady, sober, obedient, and frugal;
the former every thing that is frank and generous in his nature, the latter a
greedy hypocrite; the former rewarded with the most beautiful and virtuous
of women and a double estate, the latter punished by being made an outcast.
How is it possible for young people to read such a book, and to look upon
orderliness, sobriety, obedience, and frugality, as virtues? And this is the
tenor of almost every romance, and of almost every play, in our language.
In the 'School for Scandal,' for instance, we see two brothers; the one a
prudent and frugal man, and, to all appearance, a moral man, the other a
hair-brained squanderer, laughing at the morality of his brother; the former
turns out to be a base hypocrite and seducer, and is brought to shame and
disgrace; while the latter is found to be full of generous sentiment, and
Heaven itself seems to interfere to give him fortune and fame. In short, the
direct tendency of the far greater part of these books, is, to cause young
people to despise all those virtues, without the practice of which they must
be a curse to their parents, a burden to the community, and must, except by
mere accident, lead wretched lives. I do not recollect one romance nor one
play, in our language, which has not this tendency. How is it possible for
young princes to read the historical plays of the punning and smutty

Shakspeare, and not think, that to be drunkards, blackguards, the
companions of debauchees and robbers, is the suitable beginning of a
glorious reign?
312. There is, too, another most abominable principle that runs through
them all, namely, that there is in high birth, something of superior nature,
instinctive courage, honour, and talent. Who can look at the two royal
youths in CYMBELINE, or at the noble youth in DOUGLAS, without
detesting the base parasites who wrote those plays? Here are youths,
brought up by shepherds, never told of their origin, believing themselves
the sons of these humble parents, but discovering, when grown up, the
highest notions of valour and honour, and thirsting for military renown,
even while tending their reputed fathers' flocks and herds! And, why this
species of falsehood? To cheat the mass of the people; to keep them in
abject subjection; to make them quietly submit to despotic sway. And the
infamous authors are guilty of the cheat, because they are, in one shape or
another, paid by oppressors out of means squeezed from the people. A true
picture would give us just the reverse; would show us that 'high birth' is the
enemy of virtue, of valour, and of talent; would show us, that with all their
incalculable advantages, royal and noble families have, only by mere
accident, produced a great man; that, in general, they have been amongst
the most effeminate, unprincipled, cowardly, stupid, and, at the very least,
amongst the most useless persons, considered as individuals, and not in
connexion with the prerogatives and powers bestowed on them solely by
the law.
313. It is impossible for me, by any words that I can use, to express, to the
extent of my thoughts, the danger of suffering young people to form their
opinions from the writings of poets and romances. Nine times out of ten, the
morality they teach is bad, and must have a bad tendency. Their wit is
employed to ridicule virtue, as you will almost always find, if you examine
the matter to the bottom. The world owes a very large part of its sufferings
to tyrants; but what tyrant was there amongst the ancients, whom the poets
did not place amongst the gods? Can you open an English poet, without, in
some part or other of his works, finding the grossest flatteries of royal and
noble persons? How are young people not to think that the praises bestowed
on these persons are just? DRYDEN, PARNELL, GAY, THOMSON, in
short, what poet have we had, or have we, POPE only excepted, who was

not, or is not, a pensioner, or a sinecure placeman, or the wretched
dependent of some part of the Aristocracy? Of the extent of the powers of
writers in producing mischief to a nation, we have two most striking
instances in the cases of Dr. JOHNSON and BURKE. The former, at a time
when it was a question whether war should be made on America to compel
her to submit to be taxed by the English parliament, wrote a pamphlet,
entitled, 'Taxation no Tyranny,' to urge the nation into that war. The latter,
when it was a question, whether England should wage war against the
people of France, to prevent them from reforming their government, wrote a
pamphlet to urge the nation into that war. The first war lost us America, the
last cost us six hundred millions of money, and has loaded us with forty
millions a year of taxes. JOHNSON, however, got a pension for his life, and
BURKE a pension for his life, and for three lives after his own!
CUMBERLAND and MURPHY, the play-writers, were pensioners; and, in
short, of the whole mass, where has there been one, whom the people were
not compelled to pay for labours, having for their principal object the
deceiving and enslaving of that same people? It is, therefore, the duty of
every father, when he puts a book into the hands of his son or daughter, to
give the reader a true account of who and what the writer of the book was,
or is.
314. If a boy be intended for any particular calling, he ought, of course, to
be induced to read books relating to that calling, if such books there be;
and, therefore, I shall not be more particular on that head. But, there are
certain things, that all men in the middle rank of life, ought to know
something of; because the knowledge will be a source of pleasure; and
because the want of it must, very frequently, give them pain, by making
them appear inferior, in point of mind, to many who are, in fact, their
inferiors in that respect. These things are grammar, arithmetic, history,
accompanied with geography Without these, a man, in the middle rank of
life, however able he may be in his calling, makes but an awkward figure.
Without grammar he cannot, with safety to his character as a well-informed
man, put his thoughts upon paper; nor can he be sure, that he is speaking
with propriety. How many clever men have I known, full of natural talent,
eloquent by nature, replete with every thing calculated to give them weight
in society; and yet having little or no weight, merely because unable to put
correctly upon paper that which they have in their minds! For me not to say,

that I deem my English Grammar the best book for teaching this science,
would be affectation, and neglect of duty besides; because I know, that it is
the best; because I wrote it for the purpose; and because, hundreds and
hundreds of men and women have told me, some verbally, and some by
letter, that, though (many of them) at grammar schools for years, they really
never knew any thing of grammar, until they studied my book. I, who know
well all the difficulties that I experienced when I read books upon the
subject, can easily believe this, and especially when I think of the numerous
instances in which I have seen university-scholars unable to write English,
with any tolerable degree of correctness. In this book, the principles are so
clearly explained, that the disgust arising from intricacy is avoided; and it is
this disgust, that is the great and mortal enemy of acquiring knowledge.
315. With regard to ARITHMETIC, it is a branch of learning absolutely
necessary to every one, who has any pecuniary transactions beyond those
arising out of the expenditure of his week's wages. All the books on this
subject that I had ever seen, were so bad, so destitute of every thing
calculated to lead the mind into a knowledge of the matter, so void of
principles, and so evidently tending to puzzle and disgust the learner, by
their sententious, and crabbed, and quaint, and almost hieroglyphical
definitions, that I, at one time, had the intention of writing a little work on
the subject myself. It was put off, from one cause or another; but a little
work on the subject has been, partly at my suggestion, written and
published by Mr. THOMAS SMITH of Liverpool, and is sold by Mr.
SHERWOOD, in London. The author has great ability, and a perfect
knowledge of his subject. It is a book of principles; and any young person
of common capacity, will learn more from it in a week, than from all the
other books, that I ever saw on the subject, in a twelve-month.
316. While the foregoing studies are proceeding, though they very well
afford a relief to each other, HISTORY may serve as a relaxation,
particularly during the study of grammar, which is an undertaking requiring
patience and time. Of all history, that of our own country is of the most
importance; because, for want of a thorough knowledge of what has been,
we are, in many cases, at a loss to account for what is, and still more at a
loss, to be able to show what ought to be. The difference between history
and romance is this; that that which is narrated in the latter, leaves in the
mind nothing which it can apply to present or future circumstances and

events; while the former, when it is what it ought to be, leaves the mind
stored with arguments for experience, applicable, at all times, to the actual
affairs of life. The history of a country ought to show the origin and
progress of its institutions, political, civil, and ecclesiastical; it ought to
show the effects of those institutions upon the state of the people; it ought to
delineate the measures of the government at the several epochs; and, having
clearly described the state of the people at the several periods, it ought to
show the cause of their freedom, good morals, and happiness; or of their
misery, immorality, and slavery; and this, too, by the production of
indubitable facts, and of inferences so manifestly fair, as to leave not the
smallest doubt upon the mind.
317. Do the histories of England which we have, answer this description?
They are very little better than romances. Their contents are generally
confined to narrations relating to battles, negociations, intrigues, contests
between rival sovereignties, rival nobles, and to the character of kings,
queens, mistresses, bishops, ministers, and the like; from scarcely any of
which can the reader draw any knowledge which is at all applicable to the
circumstances of the present day.
318. Besides this, there is the falsehood; and the falsehoods contained in
these histories, where shall we find any thing to surpass? Let us take one
instance. They all tell us, that William the Conqueror knocked down
twenty-six parish churches, and laid waste the parishes in order to make the
New Forest; and this in a tract of the very poorest land in England, where
the churches must then have stood at about one mile and two hundred yards
from each other. The truth is, that all the churches are still standing that
were there when William landed, and the whole story is a sheer falsehood
from the beginning to the end.
319. But, this is a mere specimen of these romances; and that too, with
regard to a matter comparatively unimportant to us. The important
falsehoods are, those which misguide us by statement or by inference, with
regard to the state of the people at the several epochs, as produced by the
institutions of the country, or the measures of the Government. It is always
the object of those who have power in their hands, to persuade the people
that they are better off than their forefathers were: it is the great business of
history to show how this matter stands; and, with respect to this great

matter, what are we to learn from any thing that has hitherto been called a
history of England! I remember, that, about a dozen years ago, I was talking
with a very clever young man, who had read twice or thrice over the
History of England, by different authors; and that I gave the conversation a
turn that drew from him, unperceived by himself, that he did not know how
tithes, parishes, poor-rates, church-rates, and the abolition of trial by jury in
hundreds of cases, came to be in England; and, that he had not the smallest
idea of the manner in which the Duke of Bedford came to possess the
power of taxing our cabbages in Covent-Garden. Yet, this is history. I have
done a great deal, with regard to matters of this sort, in my famous History
of the PROTESTANT REFORMATION; for I may truly call that famous,
which has been translated and published in all the modern languages.
320. But, it is reserved for me to write a complete history of the country
from the earliest times to the present day; and this, God giving me life and
health, I shall begin to do in monthly numbers, beginning on the first of
September, and in which I shall endeavour to combine brevity with
clearness. We do not want to consume our time over a dozen pages about
Edward the Third dancing at a ball, picking up a lady's garter, and making
that garter the foundation of an order of knighthood, bearing the motto of
'Honi soit qui mal y pense? It is not stuff like this; but we want to know
what was the state of the people; what were a labourer's wages; what were
the prices of the food, and how the labourers were dressed in the reign of
that great king. What is a young person to imbibe from a history of
England, as it is called, like that of Goldsmith? It is a little romance to
amuse children; and the other historians have given us larger romances to
amuse lazy persons who are grown up. To destroy the effects of these, and
to make the people know what their country has been, will be my object;
and this, I trust, I shall effect. We are, it is said, to have a History of
England from SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH; a History of Scotland from
SIR WALTER SCOTT; and a HISTORY OF IRELAND from Tommy
Moore, the luscious poet. A Scotch lawyer, who is a pensioner, and a
member for Knaresborough, which is well known to the Duke of
Devonshire, who has the great tithes of twenty parishes in Ireland, will,
doubtless, write a most impartial History of England, and particularly as far
as relates to boroughs and tithes. A Scotch romance-writer, who, under the
name of Malagrowther, wrote a pamphlet to prove, that one-pound-notes

were the cause of riches to Scotland, will write, to be sure, a most
instructive History of Scotland. And, from the pen of a Irish poet, who is a
sinecure placeman, and a protégé of an English peer that has immense
parcels of Irish confiscated estates, what a beautiful history shall we not
then have of unfortunate Ireland! Oh, no! We are not going to be content
with stuff such as these men will bring out. Hume and Smollett and
Robertson have cheated us long enough. We are not in a humour to be
cheated any longer.
321. GEOGRAPHY is taught at schools, if we believe the school-cards. The
scholars can tell you all about the divisions of the earth, and this is very
well for persons who have leisure to indulge their curiosity; but it does
seem to me monstrous that a young person's time should be spent in
ascertaining the boundaries of Persia or China, knowing nothing all the
while about the boundaries, the rivers, the soil, or the products, or of the
any thing else of Yorkshire or Devonshire. The first thing in geography is to
know that of the country in which we live, especially that in which we were
born: I have now seen almost every hill and valley in it with my own eyes;
nearly every city and every town, and no small part of the whole of the
villages. I am therefore qualified to give an account of the country; and that
account, under the title of Geographical Dictionary of England and Wales, I
am now having printed as a companion to my history.
322. When a young man well understands the geography of his own
country; when he has referred to maps on this smaller scale; when, in short,
he knows all about his own country, and is able to apply his knowledge to
useful purposes, he may look at other countries, and particularly at those,
the powers or measures of which are likely to affect his own country. It is of
great importance to us to be well acquainted with the extent of France, the
United States, Portugal, Spain, Mexico, Turkey, and Russia; but what need
we care about the tribes of Asia and Africa, the condition of which can
affect us no more than we would be affected by any thing that is passing in
the moon?
323. When people have nothing useful to do, they may indulge their
curiosity; but, merely to read books, is not to be industrious, is not to study,
and is not the way to become learned. Perhaps there are none more lazy, or
more truly ignorant, than your everlasting readers. A book is an admirable

excuse for sitting still; and, a man who has constantly a newspaper, a
magazine, a review, or some book or other in his hand, gets, at last, his head
stuffed with such a jumble, that he knows not what to think about any thing.
An empty coxcomb, that wastes his time in dressing, strutting, or strolling
about, and picking his teeth, is certainly a most despicable creature, but
scarcely less so than a mere reader of books, who is, generally, conceited,
thinks himself wiser than other men, in proportion to the number of leaves
that he has turned over. In short, a young man should bestow his time upon
no book, the contents of which he cannot apply to some useful purpose.
324. Books of travels, of biography, natural history, and particularly such as
relate to agriculture and horticulture, are all proper, when leisure is afforded
for them; and the two last are useful to a very great part of mankind; but,
unless the subjects treated of are of some interest to us in our affairs, no
time should be wasted upon them, when there are so many duties demanded
at our hands by our families and our country. A man may read books for
ever, and be an ignorant creature at last, and even the more ignorant for his
reading.
325. And, with regard to young women, everlasting book-reading is
absolutely a vice. When they once get into the habit, they neglect all other
matters, and, in some cases, even their very dress. Attending to the affairs of
the house: to the washing, the baking, the brewing, the preservation and
cooking of victuals, the management of the poultry and the garden; these
are their proper occupations. It is said (with what truth I know not) of the
present Queen (wife of William IV), that she was an active, excellent
manager of her house. Impossible to bestow on her greater praise; and I
trust that her example will have its due effect on the young women of the
present day, who stand, but too generally, in need of that example.
326. The great fault of the present generation, is, that, in all ranks, the
notions of self-importance are too high. This has arisen from causes not
visible to many, out the consequences are felt by all, and that, too, with
great severity. There has been a general sublimating going on for many
years. Not to put the word Esquire before the name of almost any man who
is not a mere labourer or artisan, is almost an affront. Every merchant,
every master-manufacturer, every dealer, if at all rich, is an Esquire; squires'
sons must be gentlemen, and squires' wives and daughters ladies. If this

were all; if it were merely a ridiculous misapplication of words, the evil
would not be great; but, unhappily, words lead to acts and produce things;
and the 'young gentleman' is not easily to be moulded into a tradesman or a
working farmer. And yet the world is too small to hold so many gentlemen
and ladies. How many thousands of young men have, at this moment, cause
to lament that they are not carpenters, or masons, or tailors, or shoemakers;
and how many thousands of those, that they have been bred up to wish to
disguise their honest and useful, and therefore honourable, calling!
ROUSSEAU observes, that men are happy, first, in proportion to their
virtue, and next, in proportion to their independence; and that, of all
mankind, the artisan, or craftsman, is the most independent; because he
carries about, in his own hands and person, the means of gaining his
livelihood; and that the more common the use of the articles on which he
works, the more perfect his independence. 'Where,' says he, 'there is one
man that stands in need of the talents of the dentist, there are a hundred
thousand that want those of the people who supply the matter for the teeth
to work on; and for one who wants a sonnet to regale his fancy, there are a
million clamouring for men to make or mend their shoes.' Aye, and this is
the reason, why shoemakers are proverbially the most independent part of
the people, and why they, in general, show more public spirit than any other
men. He who lives by a pursuit, be it what it may, which does not require a
considerable degree of bodily labour, must, from the nature of things, be,
more or less, a dependent; and this is, indeed, the price which he pays for
his exemption from that bodily labour. He may arrive at riches, or fame, or
both; and this chance he sets against the certainty of independence in
humbler life. There always have been, there always will be, and there
always ought to be, some men to take this chance: but to do this has become
the fashion, and a fashion it is the most fatal that ever seized upon a
community.
327. With regard to young women, too, to sing, to play on instruments of
music, to draw, to speak French, and the like, are very agreeable
qualifications; but why should they all be musicians, and painters, and
linguists? Why all of them? Who, then, is there left to take care of the
houses of farmers and traders? But there is something in these
'accomplishments' worse than this; namely, that they think themselves too
high for farmers and traders: and this, in fact, they are; much too high; and,

therefore, the servant-girls step in and supply their place. If they could see
their own interest, surely they would drop this lofty tone, and these lofty
airs. It is, however, the fault of the parents, and particularly of the father,
whose duty it is to prevent them from imbibing such notions, and to show
them, that the greatest honour they ought to aspire to is, thorough skill and
care in the economy of a house. We are all apt to set too high a value on
what we ourselves have done; and I may do this; but I do firmly believe,
that to cure any young woman of this fatal sublimation, she has only
patiently to read my COTTAGE ECONOMY, written with an anxious
desire to promote domestic skill and ability in that sex, on whom so much
of the happiness of man must always depend. A lady in Worcestershire told
me, that until she read COTTAGE ECONOMY she had never baked in the
house, and had seldom had good beer; that, ever since, she had looked after
both herself; that the pleasure she had derived from it, was equal to the
profit, and that the latter was very great. She said, that the article 'on baking
bread,' was the part that roused her to the undertaking; and, indeed, if the
facts and arguments, there made use of, failed to stir her up to action, she
must have been stone dead to the power of words.
328. After the age that we have now been supposing, boys and girls become
men and women; and, there now only remains for the father to act towards
them with impartiality. If they be numerous, or, indeed, if they be only two
in number, to expect perfect harmony to reign amongst, or between, them,
is to be unreasonable; because experience shows us, that, even amongst the
most sober, most virtuous, and most sensible, harmony so complete is very
rare. By nature they are rivals for the affection and applause of the parents;
in personal and mental endowments they become rivals; and, when
pecuniary interests come to be well understood and to have their weight,
here is a rivalship, to prevent which from ending in hostility, require more
affection and greater disinterestedness than fall to the lot of one out of one
hundred families. So many instances have I witnessed of good and amiable
families living in harmony, till the hour arrived for dividing property
amongst them, and then, all at once, becoming hostile to each other, that I
have often thought that property, coming in such a way, was a curse, and
that the parties would have been far better off, had the parent had merely a
blessing to bequeath them from his or her lips, instead of a will for them to
dispute and wrangle over.

329. With regard to this matter, all that the father can do, is to be impartial;
but, impartiality does not mean positive equality in the distribution, but
equality in proportion to the different deserts of the parties, their different
wants, their different pecuniary circumstances, and different prospects in
life; and these vary so much, in different families, that it is impossible to lay
down any general rule upon the subject. But there is one fatal error, against
which every father ought to guard his heart; and the kinder that heart is, the
more necessary such guardianship. I mean the fatal error of heaping upon
one child, to the prejudice of the rest; or, upon a part of them. This partiality
sometimes arises from mere caprice; sometimes from the circumstance of
the favourite being more favoured by nature than the rest; sometimes from
the nearer resemblance to himself, that the father sees in the favourite; and,
sometimes, from the hope of preventing the favoured party from doing that
which would disgrace the parent. All these motives are highly censurable,
but the last is the most general, and by far the most mischievous in its
effects. How many fathers have been ruined, how many mothers and
families brought to beggary, how many industrious and virtuous groups
have been pulled down from competence to penury, from the desire to
prevent one from bringing shame on the parent! So that, contrary to every
principle of justice, the bad is rewarded for the badness; and the good
punished for the goodness. Natural affection, remembrance of infantine
endearments, reluctance to abandon long-cherished hopes, compassion for
the sufferings of your own flesh and blood, the dread of fatal consequences
from your adhering to justice; all these beat at your heart, and call on you to
give way: but, you must resist them all; or, your ruin, and that of the rest of
your family, are decreed. Suffering is the natural and just punishment of
idleness, drunkenness, squandering, and an indulgence in the society of
prostitutes; and, never did the world behold an instance of an offender, in
this way, reclaimed but by the infliction of this punishment; particularly, if
the society of prostitutes made part of the offence; for, here is something
that takes the heart from you. Nobody ever yet saw, and nobody ever will
see, a young man, linked to a prostitute, and retain, at the same time, any,
even the smallest degree of affection, for parents or brethren. You may
supplicate, you may implore, you may leave yourself pennyless, and your
virtuous children without bread; the invisible cormorant will still call for
more; and, as we saw, only the other day, a wretch was convicted of having,
at the instigation of his prostitute, beaten his aged mother, to get from her

the small remains of the means necessary to provide her with food. In
HERON'S collection of God's judgments on wicked acts, it is related of an
unnatural son, who fed his aged father upon orts and offal, lodged him in a
filthy and crazy garret, and clothed him in sackcloth, while he and his wife
and children lived in luxury; that, having bought sackcloth enough for two
dresses for his father, the children took away the part not made up, and hid
it, and that, upon asking them what they could do this for, they told him that
they meant to keep it for him, when he should become old and walk with a
stick! This, the author relates, pierced his heart; and, indeed, if this failed,
he must have had the heart of a tiger; but, even this would not succeed with
the associate of a prostitute. When this vice, this love of the society of
prostitutes; when this vice has once got fast hold, vain are all your
sacrifices, vain your prayers, vain your hopes, vain your anxious desire to
disguise the shame from the world; and, if you have acted well your part, no
part of that shame falls on you, unless you have administered to the cause
of it. Your authority has ceased; the voice of the prostitute, or the charms of
the bottle, or the rattle of the dice, has been more powerful than your advice
and example: you must lament this: but, it is not to bow you down; and,
above all things, it is weak, and even criminally selfish, to sacrifice the rest
of your family, in order to keep from the world the knowledge of that,
which, if known, would, in your view of the matter, bring shame on
yourself.
330. Let me hope, however, that this is a calamity which will befall very
few good fathers; and that, of all such, the sober, industrious, and frugal
habits of their children, their dutiful demeanor, their truth and their
integrity, will come to smooth the path of their downward days, and be the
objects on which their eyes will close. Those children must, in their turn,
travel the same path; and they may be assured, that, 'Honour thy father and
thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land,' is a precept, a disregard
of which never yet failed, either first or last, to bring its punishment. And,
what can be more just than that signal punishment should follow such a
crime; a crime directly against the voice of nature itself? Youth has its
passions, and due allowance justice will make for these; but, are the
delusions of the boozer, the gamester, or the harlot, to be pleaded in excuse
for a disregard of the source of your existence? Are those to be pleaded in
apology for giving pain to the father who has toiled half a lifetime in order

to feed and clothe you, and to the mother whose breast has been to you the
fountain of life? Go, you, and shake the hand of the boon-companion; take
the greedy harlot to your arms; mock at the tears of your tender and anxious
parents; and, when your purse is empty and your complexion faded, receive
the poverty and the scorn due to your base ingratitude!

LETTER VI

TO THE CITIZEN
331. Having now given my Advice to the YOUTH, the grown-up MAN, the
LOVER, the HUSBAND and the FATHER, I shall, in this concluding
Number, tender my Advice to the CITIZEN, in which capacity every man
has rights to enjoy and duties to perform, and these too of importance not
inferior to those which belong to him, or are imposed upon him, as son,
parent, husband or father. The word citizen is not, in its application,
confined to the mere inhabitants of cities: it means, a member of a civil
society, or community; and, in order to have a clear comprehension of man's
rights and duties in this capacity, we must take a look at the origin of civil
communities.
332. Time was when the inhabitants of this island, for instance, laid claim to
all things in it, without the words owner or property being known. God had
given to all the people all the land and all the trees, and every thing else,
just as he has given the burrows and the grass to the rabbits, and the bushes
and the berries to the birds; and each man had the good things of this world
in a greater or less degree in proportion to his skill, his strength and his
valour. This is what is called living under the LAW OF NATURE; that is to
say, the law of self-preservation and self-enjoyment, without any restraint
imposed by a regard for the good of our neighbours.
333. In process of time, no matter from what cause, men made amongst
themselves a compact, or an agreement, to divide the land and its products
in such manner that each should have a share to his own exclusive use, and
that each man should be protected in the exclusive enjoyment of his share
by the united power of the rest; and, in order to ensure the due and certain
application of this united power, the whole of the people agreed to be bound
by regulations, called LAWS. Thus arose civil society; thus arose property;
thus arose the words mine and thine. One man became possessed of more
good things than another, because he was more industrious, more skilful,
more careful, or more frugal: so that LABOUR, of one sort or another, was
the BASIS of all property.

334. In what manner civil societies proceeded in providing for the making
of laws and for the enforcing of them; the various ways in which they took
measures to protect the weak against the strong; how they have gone to
work to secure wealth against the attacks of poverty; these are subjects that
it would require volumes to detail; but these truths are written on the heart
of man: that all men are, by nature, equal; that civil society can never have
arisen from any motive other than that of the benefit of the whole; that,
whenever civil society makes the greater part of the people worse off than
they were under the Law of Nature, the civil compact is, in conscience,
dissolved, and all the rights of nature return; that, in civil society, the rights
and the duties go hand in hand, and that, when the former are taken away,
the latter cease to exist.
335. Now, then, in order to act well our part, as citizens, or members of the
community, we ought clearly to understand what our rights are; for, on our
enjoyment of these depend our duties, rights going before duties, as value
received goes before payment. I know well, that just the contrary of this is
taught in our political schools, where we are told, that our first duty is to
obey the laws; and it is not many years ago, that HORSLEY, Bishop of
Rochester, told us, that the people had nothing to do with the laws but to
obey them. The truth is, however, that the citizen's first duty is to maintain
his rights, as it is the purchaser's first duty to receive the thing for which he
has contracted.
336. Our rights in society are numerous; the right of enjoying life and
property; the right of exerting our physical and mental powers in an
innocent manner; but, the great right of all, and without which there is, in
fact, no right, is, the right of taking a part in the making of the laws by
which we are governed. This right is founded in that law of Nature spoken
of above; it springs out of the very principle of civil society; for what
compact, what agreement, what common assent, can possibly be imagined
by which men would give up all the rights of nature, all the free enjoyment
of their bodies and their minds, in order to subject themselves to rules and
laws, in the making of which they should have nothing to say, and which
should be enforced upon them without their assent? The great right,
therefore, of every man, the right of rights, is the right of having a share in
the making of the laws, to which the good of the whole makes it his duty to
submit.

337. With regard to the means of enabling every man to enjoy this share,
they have been different, in different countries, and, in the same countries,
at different times. Generally it has been, and in great communities it must
be, by the choosing of a few to speak and act in behalf of the many: and, as
there will hardly ever be perfect unanimity amongst men assembled for any
purpose whatever, where fact and argument are to decide the question, the
decision is left to the majority, the compact being that the decision of the
majority shall be that of the whole. Minors are excluded from this right,
because the law considers them as infants, because it makes the parent
answerable for civil damages committed by them, and because of their legal
incapacity to make any compact. Women are excluded because husbands are
answerable in law for their wives, as to their civil damages, and because the
very nature of their sex makes the exercise of this right incompatible with
the harmony and happiness of society. Men stained with indelible crimes
are excluded, because they have forfeited their right by violating the laws,
to which their assent has been given. Insane persons are excluded, because
they are dead in the eye of the law, because the law demands no duty at
their hands, because they cannot violate the law, because the law cannot
affect them; and, therefore, they ought to have no hand in making it.
338. But, with these exceptions, where is the ground whereon to maintain
that any man ought to be deprived of this right, which he derives directly
from the law of Nature, and which springs, as I said before, out of the same
source with civil society itself? Am I told, that property ought to confer this
right? Property sprang from labour, and not labour from property; so that if
there were to be a distinction here, it ought to give the preference to labour.
All men are equal by nature; nobody denies that they all ought to be equal
in the eye of the law; but, how are they to be thus equal, if the law begin by
suffering some to enjoy this right and refusing the enjoyment to others? It is
the duty of every man to defend his country against an enemy, a duty
imposed by the law of Nature as well as by that of civil society, and without
the recognition of this duty, there could exist no independent nation and no
civil society. Yet, how are you to maintain that this is the duty of every man,
if you deny to some men the enjoyment of a share in making the laws?
Upon what principle are you to contend for equality here, while you deny
its existence as to the right of sharing in the making of the laws? The poor
man has a body and a soul as well as the rich man; like the latter, he has

parents, wife and children; a bullet or a sword is as deadly to him as to the
rich man; there are hearts to ache and tears to flow for him as well as for the
squire or the lord or the loan-monger: yet, notwithstanding this equality, he
is to risk all, and, if he escape, he is still to be denied an equality of rights!
If, in such a state of things, the artisan or labourer, when called out to fight
in defence of his country, were to answer: 'Why should I risk my life? I
have no possession but my labour; no enemy will take that from me; you,
the rich, possess all the land and all its products; you make what laws you
please without my participation or assent; you punish me at your pleasure;
you say that my want of property excludes me from the right of having a
share in the making of the laws; you say that the property that I have in my
labour is nothing worth; on what ground, then, do you call on me to risk my
life?' If, in such a case, such questions were put, the answer is very difficult
to be imagined.
339. In cases of civil commotion the matter comes still more home to us. On
what ground is the rich man to call the artisan from his shop or the labourer
from the field to join the sheriff's possé or the militia, if he refuse to the
labourer and artisan the right of sharing in the making of the laws? Why are
they to risk their lives here? To uphold the laws, and to protect property.
What! laws, in the making of, or assenting to, which they have been
allowed to have no share? Property, of which they are said to possess none?
What! compel men to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of
property; and then, in the same breath, tell them, that they are not allowed
to share in the making of the laws, because, and ONLY BECAUSE, they
have no property! Not because they have committed any crime; not because
they are idle or profligate; not because they are vicious in any way; out
solely because they have no property; and yet, at the same time, compel
them to come forth and risk their lives for the protection of property!
340. But, the PAUPERS? Ought they to share in the making of the laws?
And why not? What is a pauper; what is one of the men to whom this
degrading appellation is applied? A very poor man; a man who is, from
some cause or other, unable to supply himself with food and raiment
without aid from the parish-rates. And, is that circumstance alone to deprive
him of his right, a right of which he stands more in need than any other
man? Perhaps he has, for many years of his life, contributed directly to
those rates; and ten thousand to one he has, by his labour, contributed to

them indirectly. The aid which, under such circumstances, he receives, is
his right; he receives it not as an alms: he is no mendicant; he begs not; he
comes to receive that which the law of the country awards him in lieu of the
larger portion assigned him by the law of Nature. Pray mark that, and let it
be deeply engraven on your memory. The audacious and merciless
MALTHUS (a parson of the church establishment) recommended, some
years ago, the passing of a law to put an end to the giving of parish relief,
though he recommended no law to put an end to the enormous taxes paid by
poor people. In his book he said, that the poor should be left to the law of
Nature, which, in case of their having nothing to buy food with, doomed
them to starve. They would ask nothing better than to be left to the law of
Nature; that law which knows nothing about buying food or any thing else;
that law which bids the hungry and the naked take food and raiment
wherever they find it best and nearest at hand; that law which awards all
possessions to the strongest; that law the operations of which would clear
out the London meat-markets and the drapers' and jewellers' shops in about
half an hour: to this law the parson wished the parliament to leave the
poorest of the working people; but, if the parliament had done it, it would
have been quickly seen, that this law was far from 'dooming them to be
starved.'
341. Trusting that it is unnecessary for me to express a hope, that barbarous
thoughts like those of Malthus and his tribe will never be entertained by any
young man who has read the previous Numbers of this work, let me return
to my very, very poor man, and ask, whether it be consistent with justice,
with humanity, with reason, to deprive a man of the most precious of his
political rights, because, and only because, he has been, in a pecuniary way,
singularly unfortunate? The Scripture says, 'Despise not the poor, because
he is poor;' that is to say, despise him not on account of his poverty. Why,
then, deprive him of his right; why put him out of the pale of the law, on
account of his poverty? There are some men, to be sure, who are reduced to
poverty by their vices, by idleness, by gaming, by drinking, by squandering;
but, the far greater part by bodily ailments, by misfortunes to the effects of
which all men may, without any fault, and even without any folly, be
exposed: and, is there a man on earth so cruelly unjust as to wish to add to
the sufferings of such persons by stripping them of their political rights?
How many thousands of industrious and virtuous men have, within these

few years, been brought down from a state of competence to that of
pauperism! And, is it just to strip such men of their rights, merely because
they are thus brought down? When I was at ELY, last spring, there were in
that neighbourhood, three paupers cracking stones on the roads, who had
all three been, not only rate-payers, but overseers of the poor, within seven
years of the day when I was there. Is there any man so barbarous as to say,
that these men ought, merely on account of their misfortunes, to be
deprived of their political rights? Their right to receive relief is as perfect as
any right of property; and, would you, merely because they claim this right,
strip them of another right? To say no more of the injustice and the cruelty,
is there reason, is there common sense in this? What! if a farmer or
tradesman be, by flood or by fire, so totally ruined as to be compelled,
surrounded by his family, to resort to the parish-book, would you break the
last heart-string of such a man by making him feel the degrading loss of his
political rights?
342. Here, young man of sense and of spirit; here is the point on which you
are to take your stand. There are always men enough to plead the cause of
the rich; enough and enough to echo the woes of the fallen great; but, be it
your part to show compassion for those who labour, and to maintain their
rights. Poverty is not a crime, and, though it sometimes arises from faults, it
is not, even in that case, to be visited by punishment beyond that which it
brings with itself. Remember, that poverty is decreed by the very nature of
man. The Scripture says, that 'the poor shall never cease from out of the
land;' that is to say, that there shall always be some very poor people. This
is inevitable from the very nature of things. It is necessary to the existence
of mankind, that a very large portion of every people should live by manual
labour; and, as such labour is pain, more or less, and as no living creature
likes pain, it must be, that the far greater part of labouring people will
endure only just as much of this pain as is absolutely necessary to the
supply of their daily wants. Experience says that this has always been, and
reason and nature tell us, that this must always be. Therefore, when
ailments, when losses, when untoward circumstances of any sort, stop or
diminish the daily supply, want comes; and every just government will
provide, from the general stock, the means to satisfy this want.
343. Nor is the deepest poverty without its useful effects in society. To the
practice of the virtues of abstinence, sobriety, care, frugality, industry, and

even honesty and amiable manners and acquirement of talent, the two great
motives are, to get upwards in riches or fame, and to avoid going
downwards to poverty, the last of which is the most powerful of the two. It
is, therefore, not with contempt, but with compassion, that we should look
on those, whose state is one of the decrees of nature, from whose sad
example we profit, and to whom, in return, we ought to make compensation
by every indulgent and kind act in our power, and particularly by a defence
of their rights. To those who labour, we, who labour not with our hands,
owe all that we eat, drink and wear; all that shades us by day and that
shelters us by night; all the means of enjoying health and pleasure; and,
therefore, if we possess talent for the task, we are ungrateful or cowardly, or
both, if we omit any effort within our power to prevent them from being
slaves; and, disguise the matter how we may, a slave, a real slave, every
man is, who has no share in making the laws which he is compelled to obey.
344. What is a slave? For, let us not be amused by a name; but look well
into the matter. A slave is, in the first place, a man who has no property; and
property means something that he has, and that nobody can take from him
without his leave, or consent. Whatever man, no matter what he may call
himself or any body else may call him, can have his money or his goods
taken from him by force, by virtue of an order, or ordinance, or law, which
he has had no hand in making, and to which he has not given his assent, has
no property, and is merely a depositary of the goods of his master. A slave
has no property in his labour; and any man who is compelled to give up the
fruit of his labour to another, at the arbitrary will of that other, has no
property in his labour, and is, therefore, a slave, whether the fruit of his
labour be taken from him directly or indirectly. If it be said, that he gives up
this fruit of his labour by his own will, and that it is not forced from him. I
answer, To be sure he may avoid eating and drinking and may go naked;
but, then he must die; and on this condition, and this condition only, can he
refuse to give up the fruit of his labour; 'Die, wretch, or surrender as much
of your income, or the fruit of your labour as your masters choose to take.'
This is, in fact, the language of the rulers to every man who is refused to
have a share in the making of the laws to which he is forced to submit.
345. But, some one may say, slaves are private property, and may be bought
and sold, out and out, like cattle. And, what is it to the slave, whether he be
property of one or of many; or, what matters it to him, whether he pass from

master to master by a sale for an indefinite term, or be let to hire by the
year, month, or week? It is, in no case, the flesh and blood and bones that
are sold, but the labour; and, if you actually sell the labour of man, is not
that man a slave, though you sell it for only a short time at once? And, as to
the principle, so ostentatiously displayed in the case of the black slave-
trade, that 'man ought not to have a property in man,' it is even an
advantage to the slave to be private property, because the owner has then a
clear and powerful interest in the preservation of his life, health and
strength, and will, therefore, furnish him amply with the food and raiment
necessary for these ends. Every one knows, that public property is never so
well taken care of as private property; and this, too, on the maxim, that 'that
which is every body's business is nobody's business.' Every one knows that
a rented farm is not so well kept in heart, as a farm in the hands of the
owner. And as to punishments and restraints, what difference is there,
whether these be inflicted and imposed by a private owner, or his overseer,
or by the agents and overseers of a body of proprietors? In short, if you can
cause a man to be imprisoned or whipped if he do not work enough to
please you; if you can sell him by auction for a time limited; if you can
forcibly separate him from his wife to prevent their having children; if you
can shut him up in his dwelling place when you please, and for as long a
time as you please; if you can force him to draw a cart or wagon like a beast
of draught; if you can, when the humour seizes you, and at the suggestion
of your mere fears, or whim, cause him to be shut up in a dungeon during
your pleasure: if you can, at your pleasure, do these things to him, is it not
to be impudently hypocritical to affect to call him a free-man? But, after all,
these may all be wanting, and yet the man be a slave, if he be allowed to
have no property; and, as I have shown, no property he can have, not even
in that labour, which is not only property, but the basis of all other property,
unless he have a share in making the laws to which he is compelled to
submit.
346. It is said, that he may have this share virtually though not in form and
name; for that his employers may have such share, and they will, as a matter
of course, act for him. This doctrine, pushed home, would make the chief of
the nation the sole maker of the laws; for, if the rich can thus act for the
poor, why should not the chief act for the rich? This matter is very
completely explained by the practice in the UNITED STATES OF

AMERICA. There the maxim is, that every free man, with the exception of
men stained with crime and men insane, has a right to have a voice in
choosing those who make the laws. The number of Representatives sent to
the Congress is, in each State, proportioned to the number of free people.
But, as there are slaves in some of the States, these States have a certain
portion of additional numbers on account of those slaves! Thus the slaves
are represented by their owners, and this is real, practical, open and
undisguised virtual representation! No doubt that white men may be
represented in the same way; for the colour of the skin is nothing; but let
them be called slaves, then; let it not be pretended that they are free men; let
not the word liberty be polluted by being applied to their state; let it be
openly and honestly avowed, as in America, that they are slaves; and then
will come the question whether men ought to exist in such a state, or
whether they ought to do every thing in their power to rescue themselves
from it.
347. If the right to have a share in making the laws were merely a feather; if
it were a fanciful thing; if it were only a speculative theory; if it were but an
abstract principle; on any of these suppositions, it might be considered as
of little importance. But it is none of these; it is a practical matter; the want
of it not only is, but must of necessity be, felt by every man who lives under
that want. If it were proposed to the shopkeepers in a town, that a rich man
or two, living in the neighbourhood, should have power to send, whenever
they pleased, and take away as much as they pleased of the money of the
shopkeepers, and apply it to what uses they please; what an outcry the
shopkeepers would make! And yet, what would this be more than taxes
imposed on those who have no voice in choosing the persons who impose
them? Who lets another man put his hand into his purse when he pleases?
Who, that has the power to help himself, surrenders his goods or his money
to the will of another? Has it not always been, and must it not always be,
true, that, if your property be at the absolute disposal of others, your ruin is
certain? And if this be, of necessity, the case amongst individuals and parts
of the community, it must be the case with regard to the whole community.
348. Aye, and experience shows us that it always has been the case. The
natural and inevitable consequences of a want of this right in the people
have, in all countries, been taxes pressing the industrious and laborious to
the earth; severe laws and standing armies to compel the people to submit

to those taxes; wealth, luxury, and splendour, amongst those who make the
laws and receive the taxes; poverty, misery, immorality and crime, amongst
those who bear the burdens; and at last commotion, revolt, revenge, and
rivers of blood. Such have always been, and such must always be, the
consequences of a want of this right of all men to share in the making of the
laws, a right, as I have before shown, derived immediately from the law of
Nature, springing up out of the same source with civil society, and
cherished in the heart of man by reason and by experience.
349. Well, then, this right being that, without the enjoyment of which there
is, in reality, no right at all, how manifestly is it the first duty of every man
to do all in his power to maintain this right where it exists, and to restore it
where it has been lost? For observe, it must, at one time, have existed in
every civil community, it being impossible that it could ever be excluded by
any social compact; absolutely impossible, because it is contrary to the law
of self-preservation to believe, that men would agree to give up the rights of
nature without stipulating for some benefit. Before we can affect to believe
that this right was not reserved, in such compact, as completely as the right
to live was reserved, we must affect to believe, that millions of men, under
no control but that of their own passions and desires, and having all the
earth and its products at the command of their strength and skill, consented
to be for ever, they and their posterity, the slaves of a few.
350. We cannot believe this, and therefore, without going back into history
and precedents, we must believe, that, in whatever civil community this
right does not exist, it has been lost, or rather, unjustly taken away. And
then, having seen the terrible evils which always have arisen, and always
must arise, from the want of it; being convinced that, where lost or taken
away by force or fraud, it is our very first duty to do all in our power to
restore it, the next consideration is, how one ought to act in the discharge of
this most sacred duty; for sacred it is even as the duties of husband and
father. For, besides the baseness of the thought of quietly submitting to be a
slave oneself, we have here, besides our duty to the community, a duty to
perform towards our children and our children's children. We all
acknowledge that it is our bounden duty to provide, as far as our power will
go, for the competence, the health, and the good character of our children;
but, is this duty superior to that of which I am now speaking? What is
competence, what is health, if the possessor be a slave, and hold his

possessions at the will of another, or others; as he must do if destitute of the
right to a share in the making of the laws? What is competence, what is
health, if both can, at any moment, be snatched away by the grasp or the
dungeon of a master; and his master he is who makes the laws without his
participation or assent? And, as to character, as to fair fame, when the
white slave puts forward pretensions to those, let him no longer affect to
commiserate the state of his sleek and fat brethren in Barbadoes and
Jamaica; let him hasten to mix the hair with the wool, to blend the white
with the black, and to lose the memory of his origin amidst a dingy
generation.
351. Such, then, being the nature of the duty, how are we to go to work in
the performance of it, and what are our means? With regard to these, so
various are the circumstances, so endless the differences in the states of
society, and so many are the cases when it would be madness to attempt that
which it would be prudence to attempt in others, that no general rule can be
given beyond this; that, the right and the duty being clear to our minds, the
means that are surest and swiftest are the best. In every such case, however,
the great and predominant desire ought to be not to employ any means
beyond those of reason and persuasion, as long as the employment of these
afford a ground for rational expectation of success. Men are, in such a case,
labouring, not for the present day only, but for ages to come; and therefore
they should not slacken in their exertions, because the grave may close
upon them before the day of final triumph arrive. Amongst the virtues of the
good Citizen are those of fortitude and patience; and, when he has to carry
on his struggle against corruptions deep and widely-rooted, he is not to
expect the baleful tree to come down at a single blow; he must patiently
remove the earth that props and feeds it, and sever the accursed roots one by
one.
352. Impatience here is a very bad sign. I do not like your patriots, who,
because the tree does not give way at once, fall to blaming all about them,
accuse their fellow-sufferers of cowardice, because they do not do that
which they themselves dare not think of doing. Such conduct argues
chagrin and disappointment; and these argue a selfish feeling: they argue,
that there has been more of private ambition and gain at work than of public
good. Such blamers, such general accusers, are always to be suspected.
What does the real patriot want more than to feel conscious that he has

done his duty towards his country; and that, if life should not allow him
time to see his endeavours crowned with success, his children will see it?
The impatient patriots are like the young men (mentioned in the beautiful
fable of LA FONTAINE) who ridiculed the man of fourscore, who was
planting an avenue of very small trees, which, they told him, that he never
could expect to see as high as his head. 'Well,' said he, 'and what of that? If
their shade afford me no pleasure, it may afford pleasure to my children,
and even to you; and, therefore, the planting of them gives me pleasure.'
353. It is the want of the noble disinterestedness, so beautifully expressed in
this fable, that produces the impatient patriots. They wish very well to their
country, because they want some of the good for themselves. Very natural
that all men should wish to see the good arrive, and wish to share in it too;
but, we must look on the dark side of nature to find the disposition to cast
blame on the whole community because our wishes are not instantly
accomplished, and especially to cast blame on others for not doing that
which we ourselves dare not attempt. There is, however, a sort of patriot a
great deal worse than this; he, who having failed himself, would see his
country enslaved for ever, rather than see its deliverance achieved by others.
His failure has, perhaps, arisen solely from his want of talent, or discretion;
yet his selfish heart would wish his country sunk in everlasting degradation,
lest his inefficiency for the task should be established by the success of
others. A very hateful character, certainly, but, I am sorry to say, by no
means rare. Envy, always associated with meanness of soul, always
detestable, is never so detestable as when it shows itself here.
354. Be it your care, my young friend (and I tender you this as my parting
advice), if you find this base and baleful passion, which the poet calls 'the
eldest born of hell;' if you find it creeping into your heart, be it your care to
banish it at once and for ever; for, if once it nestle there, farewell to all the
good which nature has enabled you to do, and to your peace into the
bargain. It has pleased God to make an unequal distribution of talent, of
industry, of perseverance, of a capacity to labour, of all the qualities that
give men distinction. We have not been our own makers: it is no fault in
you that nature has placed him above you, and, surely, it is no fault in him;
and would you punish him on account, and only on account, of his pre-
eminence! If you have read this book you will startle with horror at the
thought: you will, as to public matters, act with zeal and with good humour,

though the place you occupy be far removed from the first; you will support
with the best of your abilities others, who, from whatever circumstance,
may happen to take the lead; you will not suffer even the consciousness and
the certainty of your own superior talents to urge you to do any thing which
might by possibility be injurious to your country's cause; you will be
forbearing under the aggressions of ignorance, conceit, arrogance, and even
the blackest of ingratitude superadded, if by resenting these you endanger
the general good; and, above all things, you will have the justice to bear in
mind, that that country which gave you birth, is, to the last hour of your
capability, entitled to your exertions in her behalf, and that you ought not,
by acts of commission or of omission, to visit upon her the wrongs which
may have been inflicted on you by the envy and malice of individuals. Love
of one's native soil is a feeling which nature has implanted in the human
breast, and that has always been peculiarly strong in the breasts of
Englishmen. God has given us a country of which to be proud, and that
freedom, greatness and renown, which were handed down to us by our wise
and brave forefathers, bid us perish to the last man, rather than suffer the
land of their graves to become a land of slavery, impotence and dishonour.
355. In the words with which I concluded my English Grammar, which I
addressed to my son James, I conclude my advice to you. 'With English and
French on your tongue and in your pen, you have a resource, not only
greatly valuable in itself, but a resource that you can be deprived of by none
of those changes and chances which deprive men of pecuniary possessions,
and which, in some cases, make the purse-proud man of yesterday a
crawling sycophant to-day. Health, without which life is not worth having,
you will hardly fail to secure by early rising, exercise, sobriety, and
abstemiousness as to food. Happiness, or misery, is in the mind. It is the
mind that lives; and the length of life ought to be measured by the number
and importance of our ideas, and not by the number of our days. Never,
therefore, esteem men merely on account of their riches or their station.
Respect goodness, find it where you may. Honour talent wherever you
behold it unassociated with vice; but, honour it most when accompanied
with exertion, and especially when exerted in the cause of truth and justice;
and, above all things, hold it in honour, when it steps forward to protect
defenceless innocence against the attacks of powerful guilt.' These words,
addressed to my own son, I now, in taking my leave, address to you. Be

just, be industrious, be sober, and be happy; and the hope that these effects
will, in some degree, have been caused by this little work, will add to the
happiness of
Your friend and humble servant,

WM. COBBETT.

Kensington, 25th Aug. 1830.

*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK ADVICE TO
YOUNG MEN ***

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will be
renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright law
means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works, so the
Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United States
without permission and without paying copyright royalties. Special rules,
set forth in the General Terms of Use part of this license, apply to copying
and distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the
PROJECT GUTENBERG™ concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a
registered trademark, and may not be used if you charge for an eBook,
except by following the terms of the trademark license, including paying
royalties for use of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge
anything for copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is
very easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project Gutenberg
eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may do
practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected by
U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark license,
especially commercial redistribution.

START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG™ LICENSE
PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work (or any
other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project Gutenberg”), you
agree to comply with all the terms of the Full Project Gutenberg License
available with this file or online at www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing
Project Gutenberg electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg electronic work,
you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to and accept all the
terms of this license and intellectual property (trademark/copyright)
agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all the terms of this agreement,
you must cease using and return or destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg
electronic works in your possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy
of or access to a Project Gutenberg electronic work and you do not agree to
be bound by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be used on
or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who agree to be
bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few things that you can
do with most Project Gutenberg electronic works even without complying
with the full terms of this agreement. See paragraph 1.C below. There are a
lot of things you can do with Project Gutenberg electronic works if you
follow the terms of this agreement and help preserve free future access to
Project Gutenberg electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the Foundation”
or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection of Project
Gutenberg electronic works. Nearly all the individual works in the
collection are in the public domain in the United States. If an individual
work is unprotected by copyright law in the United States and you are

located in the United States, we do not claim a right to prevent you from
copying, distributing, performing, displaying or creating derivative works
based on the work as long as all references to Project Gutenberg are
removed. Of course, we hope that you will support the Project Gutenberg
mission of promoting free access to electronic works by freely sharing
Project Gutenberg works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for
keeping the Project Gutenberg name associated with the work. You can
easily comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg License when you
share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are in a
constant state of change. If you are outside the United States, check the
laws of your country in addition to the terms of this agreement before
downloading, copying, displaying, performing, distributing or creating
derivative works based on this work or any other Project Gutenberg work.
The Foundation makes no representations concerning the copyright status
of any work in any country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other immediate
access to, the full Project Gutenberg License must appear prominently
whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg work (any work on which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed, performed, viewed, copied
or distributed:

This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States
and most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
under the terms of the Project Gutenberg™ License included with
this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in
the United States, you will have to check the laws of the country
where you are located before using this eBook.

1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is derived from
texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not contain a notice
indicating that it is posted with permission of the copyright holder), the
work can be copied and distributed to anyone in the United States without
paying any fees or charges. If you are redistributing or providing access to a
work with the phrase “Project Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on
the work, you must comply either with the requirements of paragraphs
1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or obtain permission for the use of the work and the
Project Gutenberg trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg electronic work is posted with the
permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution must comply
with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any additional terms imposed
by the copyright holder. Additional terms will be linked to the Project
Gutenberg License for all works posted with the permission of the
copyright holder found at the beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg License
terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this work or any
other work associated with Project Gutenberg.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without prominently
displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with active links or
immediate access to the full terms of the Project Gutenberg License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including any
word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access to or
distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg work in a format other than “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official version posted on the
official Project Gutenberg website (www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no
additional cost, fee or expense to the user, provide a copy, a means of
exporting a copy, or a means of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work
in its original “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format
must include the full Project Gutenberg License as specified in paragraph
1.E.1.