ON THE MODERN SYSTEM OF FEMALE EDUCATION. WITH A VIEW OF THE PRINCIPLES AND CONDUCT prev¿ AND FORTUNE. BY HANNAH MORE. May you fo raife your character that you may help to make the next Lord HALIFAXI TWO VOLUMES IN ONE-AND THIRD AMERICAN BOSTON: Printed for JOSEPH BUMSTEAD, Printer and INTRODUCTION. Ir It is a fingular injuftice which is often exercised: T towards women, firft to give them a very defective education, and then to expect from them the most undeviating purity of conduct;-to train them in fuch a manner as fhall lay them open to the most dangerous faults, and then to cenfure them for not proving faultlefs. Is it not unreasonable and unjust, to exprefs difappointment if our daughters fhould, in their fubfequent lives, turn out precifely that very kind of character for which it would be evident to an unprejudiced by-ftander that the whole scope and tenor of their inftruction had been systematically preparing them? Some reflections on the prefent erroneous fyftem are here with great deference fubmitted to public confideration. The Author is apprehenfive that fhe fhall be accufed of betraying the interefts of her fex by laying open their defects: but furely, an earnest wish to turn their attention to objects calculated to promote their true dignity, is not the office of an enemy. So to expofe the weakness of the land as to fuggeft the neceffity of internal improvement, and to point out the means of effectual defence, is not treachery, but patriotism. Again, it may be objected to this little work, that many errors are here afcribed to women which by no means belong to them exclufively, and that it feems to confine to the fex thofe faults which are common to the fpecies: but this is in fome measure unavoidable. In fpeaking on the qualities of one fex, the moralift is fomewhat in the fituation of the Geographer, whe |