To rear up your children therefore, in idleness and ignorance of any
useful occupation, is not only doing great injustice to the child, but also
to human society, subjecting her to expenditure and corruption in the
support and influence of paupers and criminals. Every child should learn
some trade or profession in order to self-subsistence and to the prosperity
and well-being of the state.
Hence it is a breach of moral obligation for parents, whether rich or
poor, to permit their children to grow up in idleness and vagrancy. If they
do so, and as a consequence, drag out an impoverished and miserable
existence, struggling between the importunities of want and those
precarious contingencies upon which its satisfaction is suspended; and in
the hour of despair and urgent necessity, they resort to crime in order to
meet their wants, or to dissipation in order to avert their wretchedness
for a time, is it not plain that their parents are responsible to God for
all their crime and misery?
Nothing will, therefore, justify them in their omission of this duty. No
amount of inherited wealth; no dependence upon wealthy relatives; no
honorable station in society, will excuse them from training up their
children to some useful employment by which, if circumstances demand, they
may secure a subsistence. And even if their legacy render it unnecessary to
be followed in order to subsistence, it is a duty which is due to the
state.
Pages:
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239