A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends — John Shaqi
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of FriendsClarkson, Thomas
Religion
A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 2: Taken from a View of the Education and Discipline, Social Manners, Civil and Political Economy, Religious Principles and Character, of the Society of Friends
Clarkson, Thomas
Society of Friends
[Footnote 4: Poor children are frequently sent by parishes to
cotton-mills. Little or no care is taken of their morals. The men, when
grown up, frequently become drunken, and the girls debauched. But the
evil does not stop here. The progeny of these, vitiated by the
drunkenness and debauchery of their parents, have generally diseased and
crippled constitutions, which they perpetuate to a new generation; after
which the whole race, I am told, generally becomes extinct. What
Christian can gain wealth at the expense of the health, morals, and
happiness of his fellow-creatures?]
There is a calling which is seldom followed by itself: I mean the
furnishing of funerals, or the serving of the pall. This is generally in
the hands of Cabinet-makers, or of Upholsterers, or of woollen-drapers.
Now if any Quaker should be found in any of these occupations, and if he
should unite with these that of serving the pall, he would be considered
by such an union, as following an objectionable trade. For the Quakers
having discarded all the pomp, and parade, and dress, connected with
funerals, from their own practice, and this upon moral principles, it
is insisted upon, that they ought not to be accessary to the promotion
of such ceremonials among others.
The trade of a printer, or bookseller, when exercised by a Quaker, has
not escaped the animadversions of the world. A distinction, however,
must be made here. They who condemn this calling, can never do it
justly, but in supposed cases. They must suppose, for example, that the
persons in question follow these callings generally, or that they do not
make an exception with respect to the printing or selling of such books
as may convey poison to the morals of those who read them.
A Quaker-tailor is considered as a character, which cannot consistently
exist. But a similar distinction must be made here as in a former case.
The world cannot mean that if a Quaker confines himself to the making of
clothes for his own society, he is reproachable for so doing; but only
if he makes clothes for every one without distinction, following, as he
is ordered, all the varying fashions of the world.
A Quaker-hatter is looked upon in the same light as a Quaker-tailor. But
here a distinction suggests itself again. If he make only plain and
useful hats for the community and for other Quakers, it cannot be
understood that he is acting inconsistently with his religious
profession. The charge can only lie against him, where he furnishes the
hat with the gold and the silver-lace, or the lady's riding-hat with its
ornaments, or the military hat with its lace, cockade, and plumes. In
this case he will be considered as censurable by many, because he will
be looked upon as a dealer in the superfluities condemned by his own
religion.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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