The New Hampshire Gazette

From Common Sense in Dishabille.

THE arts of the Commons has FAMILY GOVERNMENT.

Family economy, and family politics, are the object of his humble essays. He sincerely believes that the future happiness and honour of our country depend more on the parent and school-master, than on the President and Senate of the United States; and that if family and school government were well supported through the country, there would be little danger from foreign influence or domestic broils.

If this subject were more generally attended to, there would be a great saving of whips, jails and halters, and a vast addition to our private and national happiness. We have schools, academies and colleges, for teaching most of the useful arts and sciences but I scarce ever heard any thing that deserved the name of a practical lecture from a school-master, preceptor, or professors. I remember no one on the most useful of all arts, the government of children.

I can easily excuse the silence of colleges on this subject. Teachers of latin, greek, metaphysics and logic, are too much buried in learned dust, to rise even to the theory of practical knowledge. Men who spend their time in tumbling over the rusty links of a syllogistic chain, do not care to meddle with the fine springs that govern the actions of youth; this is too childish an employment for literary giants.

Speculators in ideas, like land speculators, extend their avaricious views beyond what is useful to themselves; they must be useful to others. While they monopolize the extensive tracts of theory, the plebeian labourers in the vineyard of common sense must occupy the little corners, and cultivate the wild lands of these feudal lords.

But after all, we are indebted to presidential authority for many excellent examples of parental government, in the negative. Teachers of inferior classes must make their own apology.

Young ladies at an academy are often indulged with the privilege of acting the part of the jealous wife, or the scolding wife, in a favourite comedy. Little pains is taken to qualify them to act the prudent wife. Perhaps it would offend female delicacy to mention the care of children to those, who I presume would rather remain ignorant of the numeration table, than never be called mother.

For my own part, I always thought it would have a happy tendency in schools and families to unite the precepts of government with good discipline. I have seldom seen it attempted. The pupil is commonly left to his own reflection to determine why he must obey, and how to command in his turn. Riper years may collect observation; early precepts would establish principles; the whole theory of family government is not more difficult than the rule of three; and good government is much easier in practice, than bad.

To improve this first of arts shall be the subjects of a few numbers. If the small voice of Common Sense in Dishabille can be the means of quelling family rebellions and adding to the stock of domestic happiness, the author will think himself as honourably employed, as though he was actually rolling street thunder at Philadelphia.