The generality are so bewitched with the usefulness and excellency of them, that whoever dares openly oppose them is in danger of being stoned by the rabble. Children that are taught the principles of religion, and can read the word of God, have a greater opportunity to improve in virtue and good morality, and must certainly be more civilized than others, that are suffered to run at random, and have nobody to look after them. How perverse must be the judgment of those, who would not rather see children decently dressed, with clean linen at least once a-week, that, in an orderly manner, follow their master to church, than in every open place, meet with a company of blackguards without shirts or any thing whole about them, that, insensible of their misery, are continually increasing it with oaths and imprecations! Can any one doubt but these are the great nursery of thieves and pickpockets? What numbers of felons, and other criminals, have we tried and convicted every sessions! This will be prevented by charity-schools; and when the children of the poor receive a better education, the society will, in a few years, reap the benefit of it, and the nation be cleared of so many miscreants, as now this great city, and all the country about it, are filled with. This is the general cry, and he that speaks the least word against it, an uncharitable, hard-hearted and inhuman, if not a wicked, profane, and atheistical wretch. As to the comeliness of the sight, nobody disputes it; but I would not have a nation pay too dear for so transient a pleasure; and if we might set aside the finery of the show, every thing that is material in this popular oration might soon be answered. As to religion, the most knowing and polite part of a nation have every where the least of it; craft has a greater hand in making rogues than stupidity, and vice, in general, is nowhere more predominant than where arts and sciences flourish. Ignorance is, to a proverb, counted to be the mother of devotion; and it is certain, that we shall find innocence and honesty nowhere more general than among the most illiterate, the poor silly country people. The next to be considered, are the manners and civility that by charity-schools are to be grafted into the poor of the nation. I confess that, in my opinion, to be in any degree possessed of what I named, is a frivolous, if not a hurtful quality, at least nothing is less requisite in the laborious poor. It is not compliments we want of them, but their work and assiduity. But I give up this article with all my heart; good manners we will say are necessary to all people, but which way will they be furnished with them in a charity-school? Boys there may be taught to pull off their caps promiscuously to all they meet, unless it be a beggar: But that they should acquire in it any civility beyond that I cannot conceive.