those who enter into the profeffion of arms, the inculcation of this knowledge is indifpenfably neceffary, that they may not only learn what a treasury of bleffings they have to defend, but why and how it ought to be defended; and that their dearest blood will always be nobly shed, in the protection of this illuftrious offspring of the most improved human wifdom and the most exalted human virtue. As I have already had the honour of being entrufted with the care of fome, who by their birth and fortune may be entitled to a share in the legiflature of this country, the highest trust that can be confided by man to man; and as from a consciousness of my own principles and views, and the growing favour of a generous people, I have reason to hope for repeated inftances of the fame diftinction; it has been thought expedient, as a neceffary part of the fyftem of education that I adopt, to close the following obfervations with a short sketch of the nature, privileges, and principles of the British Conftitution, drawn according to the best of my judgment from the ableft writers on the subject.

In the perufal of hiftory, curiofity urges us impatiently on with the rapidity of events, and we are wholly engroffed by the emotions of pleasure and difguft, of joy and forrow, excited by the revolutions of great states, and the characters and fortunes of the principal agents engaged in effecting or oppofing them. But in a review of the knowledge thus acquired, either for the occafional or general application of it to the purposes of life and duty, when the mind is at leisure to trace back effects to their caufes, to follow the progress of virtue and vice, and mark their gradual influence on individuals, and from individuals to the community; it then discovers the common fource of that almost boundlefs variety of defign, action, character and event, which history has difplayed; and finds, that not only the various customs and institutions civil and religious, and the different systems political and moral of different states, but their rise, establishment, grandeur, declenfion, and ruin, are to be afcribed to the nature and power of education. This raised the petty state of Athens to its amazing height of power and glory; this preferved in vigour the Spartan commonwealth for more than seven hundred years, when Philopomen fubverted the inftitu

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tions of Lycurgus, and abolished the antient laws for the inftruction and formation of youth; this made Rome the wonder of the world: and to the neglect or perverfion of this, thro' the depravity of nature, it has been owing, that the wisdom, virtue, valour, and power, of Athens, Sparta, and Rome, live now only in idea.

In all well regulated states, the first step in the education of youth is to make them good men, just and benevolent members of the univerfal fociety of mankind; and the next, to qualify them for the highest usefulness to their own country; to inform their understandings with that kind of knowledge, and to apply their talents to those objects and pursuits, that will render them most serviceable in the support of the government under which they are born, and on the strength and profperity of which their own welfare as individuals neceffarily depends.

But great as the object of education is, as the fource from whence all the happiness or misery of the rising generation must flow, it seems not, in modern policy, to engage that care and at

tention

tention which the vaft importance of it requires. Though the principles and forms of education in every ftate may have a general correfpondence with the principles of government, yet if fome difcrimination is not obferved, and particular genius and particular difpofition directed and applied to thofe employments to which they have a prevailing bent, and for which they are peculiarly fitted, diforder and weakness will be the confequence: the individual muft fuffer, from a consciousness of inability to discharge the duties to which he has been called; and when, from a department of importance, a qualified member is excluded by the appointment of one unqualified, the ftate must alfo fuffer, not only by a failure in the duties of that department, but in the lofs of two members whose talents have not been fuitably applied.

The fame form of what is called a learned and liberal education in this country, is adopted for the youth of all ranks and conditions, let their distinguishing genius, their prevailing turn and difpofition, and their future profpects in life, be ever so various. A boy totally ignorant of the rudiments of his own language, and scarcely able to read it with propriety, is fent to school

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to learn Latin and Greek, where seven years at leaft are spent in acquiring only a moderate degree of fkill in thofe languages: after this he is tranfmitted to one of the univerfities, where he paffes four years more in procuring a more competent knowledge of Latin and Greek, and in learning the rudiments of logic, natural phi→ lofophy, aftronomy, metaphyfics, and the heathen mythology and morality: at the age of twenty or a little more, he perhaps takes a degree in the arts, and then education is finished.

When education is faid to be finished, it is natural to expect, that a young man is compleatly qualified to fill and fuftain fome useful character on the public stage: and yet it will be difficult to fay, what fingle important duty of fociety he is able to discharge, what fingle office as a citizen he is qualified to execute. It may, indeed, be afked with Seneca, where are the promised fruits of this learned and liberal education, that has fwallowed up fo many of thofe important years that give to future life its form and tincture? whofe errors will it diminifh, whofe paffions will it reftrain, whom will it make more brave, more juft, more liberal? Excepting the lawyer, the phyfician, and the divine,