Page:John Adams - A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America Vol. I. (1787).djvu/153

Rh well as nature. The influence of example is very great, and almot univeral, epecially of parents over their children. In all countries it has been oberved, that vices, as well as virtues, run down in families, very often, from age to age. Any man may run over in his thoughts the circle of his acquaintance, and he will probably recoiled intances of a dipoition to michief, malice, and revenge, decending, in certain breeds, from grandfather to father and on. A young woman was lately convicted at Paris of a trifling theft, barely within the law, which decreed a capital punihiment. There were circumtances, too, which greatly alleviated her fault; ome things in her behaviour that eemed innocent and modet: every pectator, as well as the judges, was affected at the cene, and he was advied to petition for a pardon, as there was no doubt it would be granted. "No," ays he, "my grandfather, father, and brother, were all hanged for tealing; it runs in the blood of our family to teal, and be hanged; if I am pardoned now, I hall teal again in a few months more inexcueably: and therefore I will be hanged now."—An hereditary paion for the halter is a trong intance, to be ure, and cannot be very common: but omething like it too often decends, in certain breeds, from generation to generation.

If vice and infamy are thus rendered les odious, by being familiar in a family, by the example of parents, and by education, it would be as unhappy as unaccountable, if virtue and honour were not recommended and rendered more amiable to children by the ame means.

There are, and always have been, in every tate, numbers poeed of ome degree of family pride, who have been invariably encouraged, if not tered