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There is always danger to a State in excess of numbers beyond the opportunities of useful employment, and this is specially true in the case of scholars. For they profess learning, that is to say, the soul of the State, and it is too perilous to have the soul of the State troubled with their souls, that is, necessary learning with unnecessary learners. Scholars, by reason of their conceit which learning inflames, cannot rest satisfied with little, and by their kind of life they prove too disdainful of labour, unless necessity makes them trot. If that wit fall to preach which were fitter for the plough, and he to climb a pulpit who was made to scale a wall, is not a good carter ill lost, and a good soldier ill placed?

All children cannot get a full training at school, even though their private circumstances admit of it, yet as regards writing and reading, if that were all, what if everyone had them, for the sake of religion and their necessary affairs? In the long period of their whole youth, if they minded no more, these two would be easily learned in their leisure times by special opportunities, if no ordinary means were available and no school nigh. Every parish has a minister, who can give help in regard to writing and reading, if there is no one else.