18 AN ESSAY ON CHARITY-SCHOOLS. man, or a çovetous and surly farmer, cannot make such mere slaves of them, as if they were asses or oxen ? Permit the only to propose a query, whether this may not be some ground of the complaint : Are there not some persons, that would subdue their fellow- creatures, of their own species, into a perfect brutal servitude and make them as much their tools and instruments of labour as their cattle are, and treat them as though they had no souls, as though they had no share in human nature, as though they were not formed of the same flesh and blood, and had not the same sort of immortal spirits as themselves. Now if the poor know nothing at all, but are bred up in gross ignorance,and constant stupidity, it is supposedthey are fitter to become beasts of burden all their lives, without ever thinking that they are men. If this be the case,. I pity the slaves indeed ; but woe to their lords and masters, who keep them all their lives in such profound ignorance, upon such wretched and inhuman motives. There is a day coming when the rich and the poor shall appear without distinction before that God, who is no acceptor of persons; Acts x. 34. 2.' Do some persons complain, that the plough stands still or drags heavily for want of hands ? But does the plough stand still no where but where there is a school of charity ? Alas, it is not such a slender education, as we can give to a few poor children in the city or the country, that hinders this work. We would not pretend to breed them too high for that station in life, for which their birth has designed them, nor to raise them above the labours in the country-villages, where any of our.schools are kept. And these villages also are exceeding few where we have schools. If there are any public schools of charity in such villages, whichbreed up the children ofthe poor, to such degrees and refinements in learning, whereby the tillage of the fields is prevented for want of hands, we disclaim all such sort of cha- rity, and leave those who support these schools to defend them against so just an objection. But if it may not be an offence, I would make a humble en- quiry, whether there be not a far more powerful allurement that calls hands from the plough, and that is, that such a great num- ber of persons, who had blessed their paternal seats in the country with their own residence, utterly remove their habita- tions and households to the city, and fix themselves near the court : May not this be a much greater occasion of draining the fields and villages of a multitude Of the poor, who scarce ever return to a country life again : They are tempted and allured to follow their masters, and, as they call it, to seek their for- . times in the town : And some of these tempt their poor neigh- bours hither too: This fills the city with many hundreds, if not thousands, of the lower rank: more than thecity itself produces:
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