ical Philosophy, "in
making a difference between his children according as they stand in greater
or less need of the assistance of his fortune, in consequence of the
difference of their age or sex, or of the situations in which they are
placed, or the various success which they have met with."

Now the law of competence does not demand, yea, it forbids, more than a
sufficiency to meet these peculiar exigencies of the child. Those parents
who seek for more, become parsimonious, unfaithful to the moral interests
of their household, and indifferent to all legitimate objects of charity
and benevolence. These are indeed but the necessary fruits of
unfaithfulness to this law; for the course of God's providence indicates
the impossibility of our faithfulness to the duty of Christian beneficence,
and at the same time lay up for our children more than a sufficiency. We
find indeed, that in almost every instance in which parents have
transcended the limits of competence, and thus raised their children above
the necessity of doing anything themselves for a subsistence, God has
cursed the act, and the canker of His displeasure has consumed this
ill-saved property. That curse we see often in the prodigality and
dissipation of the children. They walk in the slippery paths of sin, kneel
at the altar of Mammon, fare sumptuously every day, as prodigal in spending
their fortune as their parents were penurious in amassing it, until at last
they come to want, rush into crime, and end their unhappy life in the
state's prison, or upon the gibbet.

We see, therefore, that when parents give their children more than what
they actually need, they place in their possession the instruments with
which, they ruin themselves. History shows that the most wealthy men
started out in the world with barely enough, and some, with, nothing; and
that generally those who started with an independent fortune ended with
less than they started, and many closed their earthly career in abject
poverty and misery. Besides, the man who made his fortune knows how to keep
and expend it; and in point of happiness derived from property, "there is
no comparison between a fortune which, a man acquires by well applied
industry, or by a series of success in his business, and one found in his
possession or received from another." Let, therefore, the property you
leave your children be just enough to meet the exigencies of their
situations, and no more; for

"Wealth hath ne