In order to this, let us examine into the nature of societies, and what the compound ought to consist of, if we would raise it to as high a degree of strength, beauty, and perfection, as the ground we are to do it upon will let us. The variety of services that are required to supply the luxurious and wanton desires, as well as real necessities of man, with all their subordinate callings, is in such a nation as ours prodigious; yet it is certain that though the number of those several occupations be excessively great, it is far from being infinite; if you add one more than is required, it must be superfluous. If a man had a good stock, and the best shop in Cheapside to sell turbants in, he would be ruined; and if Demetrius, or any other silversmith, made nothing but Diana's shrines, he would not get his bread, now the worship of that goddess is out of fashion. As it is folly to set up trades that are not wanted, so what is next to it is to increase in any one trade, the numbers beyond what are required. As things are managed with us, it would be preposterous to have as many brewers as there are bakers, or as many woollen-drapers as there are shoemakers. This proportion as to numbers, in every trade, finds itself, and is never better kept than when nobody meddles or interferes with it. People that have children to educate that must get their livelihood, are always consulting and deliberating what trade or calling they are to bring them up to, until they are fixed; and thousands think on this, that hardly think at all on any thing else. First, they confine themselves to their circumstances, and he that can give but ten pounds with his son must not look out for a trade, where they ask an hundred with an apprentice; but the next they think on, is always which will be the most advantageous; if there be a calling where at that time people are more generally employed than they are in any other in the same reach, there are presently half a score fathers ready to supply it with their sons. Therefore the greatest care most companies have, is about the regulation of the number of apprentices. Now, when all trades complain, and perhaps justly, that they are overstocked, you manifestly injure that trade, to which you add one member more than would flow from the nature of society. Besides that, the governors of charity schools do not deliberate so much what trade is the best, but what tradesmen they can get that will take the boys, with such a sum; and few men of substance and experience will have any thing to do with these children; they are afraid of a hundred inconveniencies from the necessitous parents of them: so that they are bound, at least most commonly, either to sots and neglectful masters, or else such as are very needy and do not care what becomes of their apprentices, after they have received the money; by which it seems as if we studied nothing more than to have a perpetual nursery for charity schools.