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THE NATURE AND CAUSES OF

Geneva, and of several other Protestant churches, may satisfyus, that in so creditable a profession, in which education isso easily procured, the hopes of much more moderate bene-fices will draw a sufficient number of learned, decent, andrespectable men into holy orders.

In professions ip which there are no benefices, such as lawand physic, if an equal proportion of people were educatedat the public expense, the competition would soon be so great,as to sink very much their pecuniary reward. It might thennot be worth any man’s while to educate his son to either ofthose professions at his own expense. They would be entirelyabandoned to such as had been educated by those public cha-rities, whose numbers and necessities would oblige them ingeneral to content themselves with a very miserable recom-pense, to the entire degradation of the now respectable pro-fessions of law and physic.

That unprosperous race of men, commonly called men ofletters, are pretty much in the situation which lawyers andphysicians probably would be in upon the foregoing suppo*sition. In every part of Europe the greater part of them havebeen educated for the church, but have been hindered by dif'ferent reasons from entering into holy orders. They havegenerally, therefore, been educated at the public expense, andtheir numbers are everywhere so great as commonly to re-duce the price of their labour to a very paltry recompense.

Before the invention of the art of printing, the only em'ployment by which a man of letters could make any thing byhis talents, was that of a public or private teacher, or by com'municating to other people the curious and useful knowledg ewhich he had acquired himself: and this is still surely a mor ehonourable, a more useful, and in general even a more p r °'fitable employment than that other of writing for a booksell er ’to which the art of printing has given occasion. The tim eand study, the genius, knowledge, and application requi slt ^to quality an eminent teacher of the sciences, are at le aSequal to what is necessary for the greatest practitioners in l a "and physic. But the usual reward of the eminent teache 1- ®bears no proportion to that of the lawyer or physician ; b ecause the trade of the one is crowded with indigent poop 1who have been brought up to it at the public expense; wher ethose of the other two are encumbered with very few who l* a ' jnot been educated at their own. The usual recompense boever of public and private teachers, small as it may app ea ' j