THE WEALTH OE NATIONS.

731

and ruin, will infallibly be bis lot. If be attempts to sellthem much dearer, be is likely to have so tew customers thathis circumstances will not be much mended. The privilegesof graduation, besides, are in many countries necessary, or atleast extremely convenient to most men of learned profes-sions ; that is, to the far greater part of those who have occa-sion for a learned education. But those privileges can beobtained only by attending the lectures of the public teach-ers. The most careful attendance upon the ablest instruc-tions of any private teacher cannot, always give any title todemand them. It is from these different causes that the pri-vate teacher of any of the sciences which are commonlytaught in universities, is in modern times generally consideredas in the very lowest order of men of letters. A man ofreal abilities can scarce find out a more humiliating or amore unprofitable employment to turn them to. The en-dowments of schools and colleges have, in this manner, notonly corrupted the diligence of public teachers, but haverendered it almost impossible to have any good private ones.

Were there no public institutions for education, no system,no science would be taught for which there was not somedemand; or which the circumstances of the times did notrender it either necessary or convenient, or at least fashion-able, to learn. A private teacher could never find liis ac-count in teaching either an exploded and antiquated systemof a science acknowledged to be useful, or a science univer-sally believed to be a mere useless and pedantic heap ofsophistry and nonsense. Such systems, such sciences, cansubsist nowhere, but in those incorporated societies for edu-cation whose prosperity and revenue are in a great measureindependent of their reputation, and altogether independentof their industry. Were there no public institutions for edu-cation, a gentleman, after going through, with applicationand abilities, the most complete course of education whichthe circumstances of the times were supposed to afford, couldnot come into the world completely ignorant of every thingwhich is the common subject of conversation among gentle-men and men of the world.

There are no public institutions for the education of wo-men, and there is accordingly nothing useless, absurd, orfantastical in the common course of their education. Theyare taught what their parents or guardians judge it necessaryor useful for them to learn; and they are taught nothing