, as to have procured for them as a
body the reputation of a moral people, they must have produced in them a
disposition to keep their faith.[37]

[Footnote 37: This character was given by Pliny to the first Christians.
They were to avoid fraud, theft, and adultery. They were never to deny
any trust, when required to deliver it up, nor to falsify their word on
any occasion.]

But the discipline of the Quakers has a direct tendency to produce this
feature in their character, and to make it an appendage of Quakerism.
For punctuality to words and engagements is a subject of one of the
periodical enquiries. It is therefore publicly handed to the notice of
the members, as a Christian virtue, that is expected of them, in their
public meetings for discipline. And any violation in this respect would
be deemed a breach, and cognizable as such, of the Quaker laws.

CHAP. X.

_Imperfect traits in the Quaker character--Some of these may be called
intellectually defective traits--First imputation of this kind is, that
the Quakers are deficient in learning compared with other people--This
trait not improbable on account of their devotion to trade--and on
account of their controversies and notions about human learning--and of
other causes._

The world, while it has given to the Quakers as a body, as it will have
now appeared, a more than ordinary share of virtue, has not been without
the belief that there are blemishes in their character. What these
traits or blemishes are, may be collected partly from books, partly from
conversation, and partly from vulgar sayings. They are divisible into
two kinds, into intellectually defective, and into morally defective
traits; the former relating to the understanding, the latter to the
heart.

The first of the intellectually defective traits consists in the
imputation, that the Quakers are deficient in the cultivation of the
intellect of their children, or that, when they grow up in life, they
are found to have less knowledge than others in the higher branches of
learning. By this I mean, that they are understood to have but a
moderate classical education, to know but little of the different
branches of philosophy, and to have, upon the whole, less variety of
knowledge than others of their countrymen in the corresponding stations
of life.

This trait seems to have originated with the world in two supposed
facts. The first is, that there has never been any literary writer of
emin