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Untitled Article
duties and the acquisition of " habits of order , cleanliness and useful subordination , " would seem the primary ends to be pursued in educating those female children from a mo nor whom most of
our menial servants must be taken . If the experience of difficulties , with a view to becoming victorious over them , were of the first im . portance . indigent children should
perhaps be left to struggle with their circumstances in a greater degree tban is usually judged adviseable : in this case it might be xnore than doubtful whether the
regular supply of a dinner , on the plan recommended by Mrs . Cappe , * would not prove a dangerous indulgence ; and much might then be said in favour of that vagrant and unsettled life
which one description of the poor prefer for themselves and their children . I am therefore apprehensive that weie the principle of this argument of the author of the Thoughts , &c . capable of being sustained , it would conclude against all our attempts to educate the children of the poor , whom , however , duty requires us to place , as far as
we are able , beyond the hurtful influences of their station—its temptations and its wants . In her next paragraph she laments the multiplication of very baneful evils in those schools where
indigent children are lodged and boarded but not carefully superintended . There are , doubtless , many instances of this want of care . Still , I have reason to
believe that the cases are much more numerous in which institutions of this sort are wisely regulated as
• P , 31 .
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544 On Charity and Day-Schools .
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well as generously patronized ; ,, nor can we legitimately argue from the abuses witnessed in some of these benevolent seminaries against their general utility . The humane and sensible writer
pleads with eloquence ( 27 5 &c . ) for the cultivation of " the tender charities that bind together parents and children , brothers and sisters . " Of these charities I also am the
advocate : nor do I think that schools in which poor girls or boys are boarded and lodged and judiciously governed , will obstruct the growth of the social and
relative affections . Parents and children , brothers and sisters , are not necessarily debarred by means of such institutions from intercourse with each other- And the mem « bers of txery family , whether in
the higher or lower ranks of life , must submit , for a time , to mutual separation . I fear , besides , that the fire-side of numbers of the poor in South Britain is far from witnessing the correctness of morals , the discipline of temper and the exercise of tenderness which give home its best charms and its substantial benefits . fl The Cotter ' s Saturday Night of the 5
Ayrshire Bard , ' is a truly delightful and instructive picture . We know , too , that it was drawn from an original . Yet I presume that it is realized in very few of the habitations of those whose
offspring enjoy the advantages of charity-schools . I grant that it may be difficult for the matron of such a school to feel exactly ' for the children
ofit < c as if they were her own . v However , it were too much to say that this measure and kind of sympathy are impossible . I am mistaken if 1 have not met witfe
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Citation
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Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Sept. 2, 1814, page 544, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2444/page/20/
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