the society from an attachment to its principles, but that this may
be a political motive also.]

In answer to this enquiry I must say, as I have observed before, that
Quakers in trade, having as good abilities, and as much diligence and
integrity as others, will succeed as well as others in it, but that,
having less sources of outgoings, their savings will be generally
greater. Hence they will have before their eyes the sight of a greater
accumulation of wealth. But in proportion as such accumulation of
substance is beheld, the love of it increases. Now while this love
increases, or while their hearts are unduly fixed on the mammon of the
world, they allow many little inconsistencies in their children to
escape their reproof. But, besides this, as the religion and the love of
the mammon of the world are at variance, they have a less spiritual
discernment than before. Hence they do not see the same irregularities
in the same light. From this omission to check these irregularities on
the one hand, and from this decay of their spiritual vision on the
other, their children have greater liberties allowed them than others in
the same society. But as these experience this indulgence, or as these
admit the customs and fashions of the world, they grow more fond of
them. Now, as they live in towns, the spark that is excited is soon
fanned into a flame. Fashions and fashionable things, which they cannot
but see daily before their eyes, begin to get the dominion. When they
are visited by wholesome advisers, they dislike the interference. They
know they shall be rich. They begin to think the discipline of the
society a cruel restraint. They begin to dislike the society itself,
and, committing irregularities, they are sometimes in consequence
disowned. But, if they should escape disownment themselves, they entail
it generally upon their children. These are brought up in a still looser
manner than themselves. The same process goes on with these as with
their parents, but in a still higher degree, till a conduct utterly
inconsistent with the principles of the society occasions them to be
separated from it. Thus in the same manner, as war, according to the old
saying, begets poverty, and poverty peace, so the pursuit of trade, with
the peculiar habits of the society, leads to riches, riches to fashion
and licentiousness, and fashion and licentiousness to disownment, so
that many Quakers educate their children as if there were to be no