The approaches to vice are by slow degrees, and the good or evil bias
given to youth is seldom eradicated. The first deviations from sound
morality should therefore be most strictly watched, and wickedness
checked or punished in time; for when vice grows into a habit, it
becomes incurable, and both good governments and private families are
deeply concerned in its attendant consequences. One need not scruple to
affirm that most of the depravity which is so frequent in the world,
and so pernicious to society, is owing to the bad education of youth;
and to the connivance or ill example of their parents. It is therefore
of the utmost consequence that parents, guardians, and tutors, should
be of characters befitting them for the various and important offices
they have to perform. The latter description of persons may and ought
to be carefully selected; but it is to be lamented that the base and
mean-spirited hosts of bad parents are out of the reach of controul,
and nothing can prevent the evils arising from their tutorage. Perhaps
it would be harsh to make laws to check the marriages of such; but
there is no need to encourage the breed of them, for they are already
over abundantly numerous.
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