That this is by no means an unreasonable account, I shall shew in some measure by an appeal to facts.  The American Quakers sprang from the English.  The English, though drained in consequence, were still considerable, when compared with the former.  But it is remarkable, that the American Quakers exceed the English by at least five times their number at the present day.  Now it must undoubtedly be confessed, that the Americans have advantages, as far as this fact is concerned, which the English have not.  They have no tithes as a cause of disownment.  Their families also, I believe, increase more rapidly.  Many persons also, as will be the case in a country that is not fully settled, live in the neighbourhoods of the Quakers, but at a distance from those of other religious denominations, and therefore, wishing to worship somewhere, seek membership with them.  But I apprehend that a great cause of this disparity of number lies in this difference of the situation of the two, that whereas the great Quaker population in England is in the towns with but a remnant in the country, the great Quaker population in America is in the country with but a remnant in the towns.[51] And that the Americans themselves believe, that the place of the residence of their members is connected in some measure with the increase and decrease of their society, it is fair to presume, from this circumstance, that, in several of the quarterly meetings in America, advice has been given to parents to bring up their children in the country, and, as little as possible, in the towns.

[Footnote 51:  The number of the Quakers is undoubtedly great in one or two of the cities in America, but the whole town-population is not great, when compared with the whole country-population there.]

Another of the original and remote causes is education.  This, as it becomes promotive of the diminution of the society, is of two kinds.  The first may be called alien.  The second is such as is afforded in the society itself.

Some parents, growing rich, and wishing to give their children a better education, than they can get in their own schools, send them to others to be instructed.  Now the result has not been desirable, where it has been designed, that such children should be continued Quakers.  For how is a poor solitary Quaker boy to retain the peculiarities belonging to his religious profession, in the face of the whole school?  Will not his opinions and manners be drowned as it were in the torrent of the opinions and manners of the rest?  How can he get out of this whirlpool pure?  How, on his return, will he harmonize with his own society?  Will not either he, or his descendants, leave it?  Such an education may make him undoubtedly both a good and an enlightened man, and so far one of the most desirable objects in life will have been accomplished, but it certainly tends to destroy the peculiar institution of Quakerism.

The education, which is afforded in the society itself, is divisible again into two kinds, into that which is moral or religious, and into that which is literary or philosophical.