Page:The Works of the Rev. Jonathan Swift, Volume 2.djvu/463

Rh, or any prospect of preferment, would avoid their commerce. This would quickly make that vice so scandalous, that those who could not subdue, would at least endeavour to disguise it.

By the like methods, a stop might be put to that ruinous practice of deep gaming; and the reason why it prevails so much, is, because a treatment, directly opposite in every point, is made use of to promote it: by which means, the laws enacted against this abuse are wholly eluded.

It cannot be denied, that the want of strict discipline in the universities, has been of pernicious consequence to the youth of this nation, who are there almost left entirely to their own management, especially those among them of better quality and fortune; who, because they are not under a necessity of making learning their maintenance, are easily allowed to pass their time, and take their degrees, with little or no improvement; than which there cannot well be a greater absurdity. For, if no advancement of knowledge can be had from those places, the time there spent is at best utterly lost, because every ornamental part of education, is better taught elsewhere: and, as for keeping youths out of harm's way, I doubt, where so many of them are got together, at full liberty of doing what they please, it will not answer the end. But, whatever abuses, corruptions, or deviations from statutes, have crept into the universities through neglect, or length of time, they might in a great degree be reformed, by strict injunctions from court (upon each particular) to the visitors and heads of houses; beside the peculiar authority the queen may have in several colleges, whereof her predecessors were the founders.