will never need to stoop to
incessant industry. It is not necessary to ascertain the absolute portion
of idleness and pride that is infused into the young man; that depends
[end of page #85] on particular circumstances: {72} but, in most
cases, it is sufficient to prevent his following the footsteps of his
father with equal energy.

Perhaps the capital, or the connections a father leaves in trade, may, in
some degree, and for some time, compensate for this; but the instances
where they do so are not numerous.

This is an example of the manner in which every succeeding
generation is brought up differently from that preceding it; but it is an
extreme example, and one that, though very real in the individuals,
can never suddenly take place on a national scale.

The difference between the general affluence of a nation, and the
change of its manners during the life of a man, is by no means equal to
the difference between a remote province and the capital of an empire;
but, though the example is extreme, the same effect is produced, in the
course of several generations upon a nation, that was occasioned by
change of place in one individual family from father to son. {73}

When a change like this takes place in one family, (and there are
numerous instances of it every day,) poverty comes on again, and the
children fall back into the laborious class of society, probably in a
degraded state; but as the evil is supplied by new people rising up, it is
little felt on the nation; if, however, it occurs very generally, it must
have a bad effect; and, indeed, the best thing that can happen for the

---
{72} If the mother has been herself born in affluence, she generally
has a sort of smothered contempt for the mean origin of her husband.
She seldom is fully sensible of the merit by which he has raised
himself, and consequently cannot be capable of appreciating the
advantage of bringing up her boy in the same way; on the contrary, the
habits of industry, which the father acquired at an early age, under the
pressure of necessity, are generally secret objects of ridicule to the rest
of the family. If, again, the woman has been of low origin in herself,
and is become affluent, then matters are ten times worse. Then there is
all the pride and vanity that ignorance, and a desire to hide that mean
extraction create. Incapable of shewing delicacy and fine breeding in
herself, she spoils her harmless children by converting them into
spe