If he survive,
the liberty of manhood is dearly bought by so many heart aches. And if
he die, happy to escape your cruelty, the only advantage he derives from
the sufferings you have inflicted, is that of not regretting a life, of
which he knew nothing but the torments.
But who is it that has told you, that the certain, or even the probable
consequences of this severity are beneficial? Nothing is so easily
proved, as that the human mind is pure and spotless, as it came from the
hands of God, and that the vices of which you complain, have their real
source in those shallow and contemptible precautions, that you pretend
to employ against them. Of all the conditions to which we are incident,
there is none so unpropitious to whatever is ingenuous and honourable,
as that of a slave. It plucks away by the root all sense of dignity, and
all manly confidence. In those nations of antiquity, most celebrated for
fortitude and heroism, their youth had never their haughty and
unsubmitting neck bowed to the inglorious yoke of a pedagogue. To borrow
the idea of that gallant assertor of humanity, sir Richard Steele: I
will not say that our public schools have not produced many great and
illustrious characters; but I will assert, there was not one of those
characters, that would not have been more manly and venerable, if they
had never been subjected to this vile and sordid condition.
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