National education is one of the first objects of a paternal government. The course of study ought ever to be adapted to the circumstances and position of the scholars. In the first years of a colony, the human mind peculiarly exhibits a downward tendency. Few men prove themselves in their new condition of life superior or equal to the character which they had formerly borne, as pious, learned, or humane. The circumstances which formerly so eminently conduced to the maintenance of piety, the cultivation of intellect, and the exercise of benevolence, no longer exist. Solitary and selfish from position, men of naturally generous temper and good disposition, feel their hearts contract and shrivel within them. Surrounded by a sordid and selfish crew, they find no objects for sympathy, no inducements for the increase or the preservation of knowledge, no animating impulse to lead them forward in a good cause. Struggling for a time in the net which is around them, they at length fall from the edge, down into the seething cauldron, and become fused among the mass. 'The tendency of colonization is to deteriorate.' The first object of Government should therefore be to arrest this impulse, and remedy the evil so far as may be accomplished. If the original settlers degenerate in their moral condition, their children sink still lower. When parents cease to feel the influence of those high and pure principles in which they were themselves brought up, they naturally forget to inculcate them in the minds of their offspring. What, then, are the guides that direct these in their progress through life? What can they be but Self-interest, relieved perhaps occasionally by a few touches of Good-nature? The young women inevitably grow up mere creatures of impulse. Where are those high qualities which are necessary to give them their proper influence over the minds and actions of the other sex? Where is that powerful sense of the duties of their calling and position, that is necessary to create confidence in the breast of the lover or the husband? Where are those unswerving principles which alone can keep them, through trial and temptation, in the right way? Woman, alas! has lost her power, when she ceases to inspire veneration and command respect. It is the interest of every colony, and the duty of every Government, to raise the moral character and condition of the people. The necessity of this must be forcibly present in the minds of those to whom the duties of legislation are intrusted; and as the most obvious means of improvement lie in the judicious instruction of the young generation, the attention of Government must soon be directed to this grand object. CHAPTER 10. COUNTRY LIFE.