When an East Indiaman first arrives off the Hoogly river, in Bengal, a crowd of black merchants, and other orientals of various descriptions, hurry on board, as if to seek whom they may devour. One of these gentry will go up to a young Englishman on the quarter-deck, and accost him with—“Massa, what appointment are you come out with?” “I am a cadet.” “Oh, Massa, very bad—no gold mohurs—no pagodas—very bad.” To another he will say, “Well, Massa, what appointment have you got?” “A writership.” “Oh, Massa, excellent good—plenty of mohurs, pagodas, rupees—make me Massa’s debash, head-man—Massa want no money—no nothing—Massa pay one time or other.” Well would it be, if when young men first entered at the university, even such a distinction was made, that the poor cadet was left to himself to make his way as he can, and that only the Massa writer (alias the known inheritor of wealth and distinction) was encouraged in the career of sensuality and extravagance. But this is far from being the case; and lamentable it is to say, that every young man, without distinction, on shaking off the trammels of school, at his very first appearance in the character of a man, at Oxford or Cambridge, has every facility afforded him to pursue a career of thoughtless expence; nor does he recover himself, if he does recover at all, till remorse harasses his spirits, and fetters every better propensity by the compunctious recollection, that he has involved himself in debts and difficulties, which it must require the exertion and the labour of years to remove. Surely this ought not to be possible. But where is the remedy, or rather, where the preventive? It is beyond doubt a matter of considerable difficulty; but still something might be done. Something like sumptuary laws might be established to prevent the sons of peers, and the sons of honest commercial persons, of private gentlemen, or of clergymen, from being confounded and immersed in one common vortex of dissipation and expence. I have a letter before me from Oxford, dated Baliol college, 1766, in which a person of considerable experience in that university states, that fourscore pounds a year is a sufficient allowance for a commoner, but that a gentleman commoner should be allowed two hundred. I had personal knowledge of an individual at Cambridge, the whole of whose college expences did not exceed forty pounds. This perhaps would hardly now be practicable, but surely the heads of the universities, and the tutors of colleges, might, by their firm and salutary interference, prevent such extraordinary and extravagant excesses, as now pollute their discipline, and disgrace their establishment.