“Mankind in the days of his youth is like a young colt, wanton and foolish, till he be broken in by education and correction; the neglect of this care, or the want of wisdom in the performance of it, hath been and is the cause of much division and trouble in the world.  Therefore the Law of a Common-wealth doth require that not only a Father, but that all Overseers and Officers should make it their work to educate children in good manners, and to see them brought up in some trade or other, and to suffer no children in any Parish to live in idleness and youthful pleasures all their days, as many have been; but that they may be brought up like men and not like beasts.  That so the Commonwealth may be planted with laborious and wise experienced men, and not with idle fools.”

He continues his reflections as follows: 

“Mankind may be considered in a four-fold degree, his childhood, youth, manhood, and old age.  His childhood and his youth may be considered from his birth till forty years of age.  Within this compass of time, after he is weaned from his mother, his parents shall teach him a civil and humble behaviour towards all men.  Then send him to school, to learn to read the Laws of the Common-wealth, to ripen his wits from his childhood, and so to proceed with his learning till he be acquainted with all Arts and Languages....  But one sort of children shall not be trained up only to book-learning, and to no other employment, called Scholars, as they are in the Government of Monarchy.  For then through idleness they spend their time to find out policies to advance themselves to be Lords and Masters over their laboring bretheren, which occasions all the trouble in the world.”

After again indicating the source of all real knowledge, he continues: 

“Therefore, to prevent idleness and the danger of Machivilian cheats, it is profitable for the Commonwealth that children be trained up in trades and some bodily employment, as well as in learning languages or the histories of former ages.  And as boys are trained up in learning and in trades, so all maids shall be trained up in reading, sewing, kniting, spinning of linnen and woollen, music, and all other easy neat works, either for to furnish Storehouses with linnen and wooll cloth, or for the ornament of particular houses with needlework.  If this course were taken, there would be no idle person or beggar in the Land, and much work would be done by that now lazy generation for the enlarging of the Common Treasury.”

INVENTION TO BE ENCOURAGED.