![]() ![]() Through the natural impatience and protervity of youth, we observe the first occasion for any animosity most frequently arising from their side: but, however, there are not wanting examples of undutiful parents: and, when a father, by using a son ill, and denying him such an education and such an allowance as his circumstances can well afford, gives him occasion to withdraw his respect from him, to urge his begetting of him as the sole obligation to duty, is talking like a silly, unthinking dotard. Yet, through the depravity of human nature, we very often see these laws violated, and the relations be fore-mentioned treating one another with as much virulence as enemies of different countries are capable of. By all laws, natural as well as civil, it is expected that the parents should cherish and provide for the child, till it is able to shift for itself and that the child, with a mutual tenderness, should depend upon the parent for it’s sustenance, and yield it a reasonable obedience. The duties between parents and their children are relative and reciprocal. It is they whose goodness makes them our parents, that properly claim our filial respect from us, and not those who are such only out of necessity. ![]() What reason then have I to have a greater regard for one to whom I am so little indebted for any part of my being, than for those from whom I have received all the benevolence and kindness which have hitherto supported me in life. She, that could not so much as tell whether I should be black or white, had a great hand in giving me life to be sure but supposing it were so, I am mightily obliged to her truly for contriving to let me be of the male-kind, so that I go every day in danger of the butcher. But sure, says he, you have a greater regard for her that gave you life, than for any body else. A WOLF meeting a Lamb one day, in company with a Goat Child, says he, you are mistaken, this is none of your mother, she is yonder, (pointing to a flock of sheep at a distance.) It may be so, says the Lamb the person that happened to conceive me, and afterwards bore me a few months in her belly, because she could not help it, and then dropt me, she did not care where, and left me to the wide world is, I suppose, what you call my mother but I look upon this charitable Goat as such, that took compassion on me in my poor, helpless, destitute condition, and gave me suck sparing it out of the mouths of her own Kids, rather than I should want it.
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