Xll LIFE OF BACOX. 



These warnings seem to have been disregarded, and the 

 art of governing, not a ship, which would not be attempted 

 without a knowledge of navigation, but the ship of the 

 state, is entrusted, not to a knowledge of the principles of 

 human nature, but to the knowledge of Latin and Greek 

 and verbal criticisms upon the dead languages. (#) 



And what has been the result? During the last two 

 centuries one class of statesmen has resisted all improve 

 ment, and their opponents have been hurried into intem 

 perate alterations : whilst philosophy, lamenting these 

 contentions, has, instead of advancing the science of govern 

 ment, been occupied in counteracting laws founded upon 

 erroneous principles; Erroneous commercial laws; Erro 

 neous laws against civil and religious liberty ; and Erro 

 neous criminal laws, (jc 



by daily experience, was, fifty years after his death, repeated by Milton, 

 who indignantly says, &quot; when young men quit the university for the trade of 

 law, they ground their purposes, not on the prudent and heavenly contem 

 plation of justice and equity, which was never taught them, but on the 

 promising and pleasing thoughts of litigious terms, fat contentions and flow- 

 ting fees : and, if they quit it for state affairs, they betake themselves to this 

 trust with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true generous breeding, that 

 flattery and court-shifts and tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest 

 points of wisdom/ After having prescribed the proper order of education, 

 he adds, The next removal must be to the study of politics ; to know the 

 beginning, end, and reasons of political societies ; that they may not in a 

 dangerous fit of the commonwealth be such poor, shaken, uncertain reeds, 

 of such a tottering conscience, as many of our great counsellors have lately 

 shown themselves, but steadfast pillars of the state. After this they are to 

 drive into the grounds of law and legal justice, delivered first, and with best 

 warrant to Moses, and as far as human prudence can be trusted, in those 

 extolled remains of Grecian lawgivers, Lycurgus, Solon, &c. and thence 

 to all the Roman edicts and tables with their Justinian ; and so to the 

 Saxon laws of England. Milton. Education, vol. i. p. 270. 



(.r) &quot; Such,&quot; says Milton, &quot; are the errors, such the fruits of mispending 

 our prime youth at schools and universities as we do, either in learning- 

 mere words, or such things chiefly as were better unlearned. See his Tract 

 on Education. 



