fathers’ flocks and herds!  And, why this species of falsehood?  To cheat the mass of the people; to keep them in abject subjection; to make them quietly submit to despotic sway.  And the infamous authors are guilty of the cheat, because they are, in one shape or another, paid by oppressors out of means squeezed from the people.  A true picture would give us just the reverse; would show us that ‘high birth’ is the enemy of virtue, of valour, and of talent; would show us, that with all their incalculable advantages, royal and noble families have, only by mere accident, produced a great man; that, in general, they have been amongst the most effeminate, unprincipled, cowardly, stupid, and, at the very least, amongst the most useless persons, considered as individuals, and not in connexion with the prerogatives and powers bestowed on them solely by the law.

313.  It is impossible for me, by any words that I can use, to express, to the extent of my thoughts, the danger of suffering young people to form their opinions from the writings of poets and romances.  Nine times out of ten, the morality they teach is bad, and must have a bad tendency.  Their wit is employed to ridicule virtue, as you will almost always find, if you examine the matter to the bottom.  The world owes a very large part of its sufferings to tyrants; but what tyrant was there amongst the ancients, whom the poets did not place amongst the gods?  Can you open an English poet, without, in some part or other of his works, finding the grossest flatteries of royal and noble persons?  How are young people not to think that the praises bestowed on these persons are just?  DRYDEN, PARNELL, GAY, THOMSON, in short, what poet have we had, or have we, POPE only excepted, who was not, or is not, a pensioner, or a sinecure placeman, or the wretched dependent of some part of the Aristocracy?  Of the extent of the powers of writers in producing mischief to a nation, we have two most striking instances in the cases of Dr. JOHNSON and BURKE.  The former, at a time when it was a question whether war should be made on America to compel her to submit to be taxed by the English parliament, wrote a pamphlet, entitled, ‘Taxation no Tyranny,’ to urge the nation into that war.  The latter, when it was a question, whether England should wage war against the people of France, to prevent them from reforming their government, wrote a pamphlet to urge the nation into that war.  The first war lost us America, the last cost us six hundred millions of money, and has loaded us with forty millions a year of taxes.  JOHNSON, however, got a pension for his life, and BURKE a pension for his life, and for three lives after his own!  CUMBERLAND and MURPHY, the play-writers, were pensioners; and, in short, of the whole mass, where has there been one, whom the people were not compelled to pay for labours, having for their principal object the deceiving and enslaving of that same people?  It is, therefore, the duty of every father, when he puts a book into the hands of his son or daughter, to give the reader a true account of who and what the writer of the book was, or is.