Arguments are urged, with the utmost vehemence, against the education of poor children in the charity schools, though there hath not one just reason been offered against the provision made for that education. The things that have been objected against it are not, in fact, true; and nothing ought to be regarded, by serious and wise men, as a weighty or just argument, if it is not a true one. How hath Catiline the confidence left to look any man in the face, after he hath spent more confidence than most mens whole stock amounts to, in saying, that this pretended charity has, in effect, destroyed all other charities, which were before given to the aged, sick, and impotent. It seems pretty clear, that if those, who do not contribute to any charity school, are become more uncharitable to any other object than formerly they were, their want of charity to the one, is not owing to their contribution to the other. And as to those who do contribute to these schools; they are so far from being more sparing in their relief of other objects, than they were before, that the poor widows, the aged and the impotent do plainly receive more relief from them, in proportion to their numbers and abilities, than from any the same numbers of men under the same circumstances of fortune, who do not concern themselves with charity schools, in any respect, but in condemning and decrying them. I will meet Catiline at the Grecian coffee-house any day in the week, and by an enumeration of particular persons, in as great a number as he pleaseth, demonstrate the truth of what I say. But I do not much depend upon his giving me the meeting, because it is his business, not to encourage demonstrations of the truth, but to throw disguises upon it; otherwise, he never could have allowed himself, after representing the charity schools as intended to breed up children to reading and writing, and a sober behaviour, that they may be qualified to be servants, immediately to add these words, a sort of idle and rioting vermin, by which the kingdom is already almost devoured, and are become every where a public nuisance, &c. What? Is it owing to the charity schools, that servants are become so idle, such rioting vermin, such a public nuisance; that women-servants turn whores, and the men-servants robbers, house-breakers, and sharpers? (as he says they commonly do). Is this owing to the charity schools? or, if it is not, how comes he to allow himself the liberty of representing these schools as a means of increasing this load of mischief, which is indeed too plainly fallen upon the public? The imbibing principles of virtue hath not, usually, been thought the chief occasion of running into vice. If the early knowledge of truth, and of our obligations to it, were the surest means of departing from it, nobody would doubt, that the knowledge of truth was instilled into Catiline very early, and with the utmost care. It is a good pretty thing in him to spread