ce of early training. In a Speech
delivered in the House of Lords in 1835 upon one of those measures which
have conferred so much glory on his name as well as benefit upon his
countrymen, he said, "If at a very early age a system of instruction is
pursued by which a certain degree of independent feeling is created in
the child's mind, while all mutinous and perverse disposition is
avoided,--if this system be followed up by a constant instruction in the
principles of virtue, and a corresponding advancement in intellectual
pursuits,--if, during the most critical years of his life, his
understanding and his feelings are accustomed only to sound principles
and pure and innocent impressions, it will become almost impossible that
he should afterward take to vicious courses, because these will be
utterly alien to the whole nature of his being. It will be as difficult
for him to become criminal, because as foreign to his confirmed habits,
as it would be for one of your lordships to go out and rob on the
highway. Thus, to commence the education of youth at the tender age on
which I have laid so much stress, will, I feel confident, be the same
means of guarding society against crimes. I trust every thing to
habit,--habit, upon which, in all ages, the lawgiver, as well as the
schoolmaster, has mainly placed his reliance,--habit, which makes every
thing easy, and casts all difficulties upon the deviation from the
wonted course. Make sobriety a habit, and intemperance will be hateful
and hard; make prudence a habit, and reckless profligacy will be as
contrary to the nature of the child, grown an adult, as the most
atrocious crimes are to any of your lordships. Give a child the habit of
sacredly regarding truth, of carefully respecting the property of
others, of scrupulously abstaining from all acts of improvidence which
can involve him in distress, and he will just as little think of lying
or cheating or stealing, or running in debt, as of rushing into an
element in which he cannot breathe."

The thought may strike some, however, that children can receive moral
discipline at home; that parents are best enabled to understand the
disposition of their children, and can consequently apply the requisite
training with more success than any one else; and, most of all, because
it is their especial duty so to do. So we might say, with almost as much
reason, that parents could teach their children the elementary branches
of knowledge; in the