AN ESSAY ON CHARITY- SCHOOLS. 23 grounds ; and where the weaving manufacture hath been culti- vated, all the children have done something towards it, for some hours in the day. As for the girls that are educated in these schools, they are always taught to work with their needles of both kinds, both knitting and sewing; and in some places they are obliged, as I have been told, to make the beds, to use the besomor the mop, and when grown up, to do harder work, per- haps to stand at the wash-bowl, and to perform the servile offices which belong to a family. 1 wish these things were more uni- versally taught and practised, as far as possible. And where- soever any methods of employing these children who are bred up by charity in labour, are contrived, proposed, and.rendered feasible and practicable in the city or the country, the managers of these schools will never refuse to promote it,, nor should the children ever refuse to complyunder the penalty of beingutterly shut out from the benefit of this liberality. Objection V. But if we allow them to learn to read, what need is there that they should learn to write also ? This puffs them up with a huge conceit of themselves and their. learning, this makes them think themselves immediately fit for clerks, or some superior business : And this knowledge surely can never be pretended to be necessary in the lower ranks of life. Answer. I will by no means contend for writing as a mat- ter of equal necessity or advantage with that of reading. There may be some places where the bounty of the contributors to such a charitable work, may not be able to maintain a writing master, nor to keep children long enough at school : Yet even there they should be taught to read well. And there may also be some of the poor who dwell in very obscure villages, and areconfined to rural labours, and others in towns or cities, and especially girls, whose business is most within doors. at home, who may have but very little occasion, and as little inclination to use a pen. I would not therefore by any means have it made a necessary part of a charity-school, that the children should be taught to write. Yet I beg leave to give my opinion, that there are several con- veniences, that even the poorest of the people, and especially servants, may attain by learning to write, which can be no dis- advantage to the public, and sonic of whichmay be for the sen- sible benefit of their masters and mistresses, as well as of ser- vants themselves. I. For the servants themselves. 1. Why may not a poor servant have the privilege of.con- veying his thoughts to a dear relation, to a-father, a mother, a brother or a sister, and letting them know their welfare or their troubles bywriting ? Why should all the lower part of mankind be universally, and for ever cut off from all those mutual ten- dernesses which nature inspires, and which may be communi.
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy OTcyMjk=