degree than in kind.  The character of the man may often be read in the conduct of the child.  Thus bad government originates in overlooking the faults of children, or in wrong views of their conduct.  The deeds of childhood are considered of small moment.  Childhood with them has no connection with manhood.  The child may be anything, and make a giant in intellect, or a professor in morals.  But it should be remembered that the very essence of good government lies in watching the connection of one act with another, in tracing the relation between the conduct of mature age and the little developments of childhood and youth.  Good government respects not only the present good of its subjects but their future.  It takes in eternity as well as time.  A great many parents are totally blind to the faults of their children.  They see none when they are even gross.  Everybody else can see them, and is talking about them, and they know not that they exist.  Like Eli, of ancient days, the first that they know of the wickedness of their children they hear it from all the people.  It is a sad thing when others have to tell us of the depravity of our children.  And it is then generally too late to correct them.  The public do not know the first aberrations of childhood and youth.  They can only be learnt in the nursery.  If parents are blind to them, and they are suffered to become habits, it is generally too late to correct them.  It is in the form of habits that neighbors become acquainted with them.  Woe to that child then, whose faults are rebuked by every one else, but not by his parents!  His faults are in every one’s mouth, but not in theirs.

2. The interference of one parent while the other is endeavoring to enforce rightful discipline.—­Nothing has a more injurious influence upon family government than such a course.  It presents the two, in whom the children should place the most implicit confidence, at variance.  As a matter of course, the disobedient child will throw himself into the hands of the one interfering, as a kind of shield from the rod.  In such a case it is almost utterly impossible to maintain government and support discipline.  The child justifies himself, and stoutly persists in his rebellion while he receives countenance from one of his parents.  This, if I mistake not, is often done.  Many a family has been ruined in this way for time and eternity.  Government was entirely disobeyed in the outset.  The father undertook the correction of the child, but the mother threw her arms over him—­she pleads that he is a little child—­that he knew not what correction means, as for what he is corrected—­or the rod is applied too severely.  The child cried most unmercifully, when perhaps he only cried because he was rebellious and stubborn.  This repeated a few times, and the one who is determined to maintain discipline becomes discouraged, and silently the management, or rather the mismanagement of the family passes into the hands of the other parent, and for peace sake.