JB/023/103/002

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see in it a probable cause of comparative inaptitude. Leave
the situation open to the earlier age, men will be trained to
this business as to all other businesses : and to their minds that
degree of expansion the demand for which applies exclusively
to this business will be endeavoured to be given. Require the
lapse of a longer term of years, the consequence is that instead
of this business the subject to which such exertion as is
made is applied will be, as in fact it is, this or that occupation,
the business of which is in comparison of the business
of legislation, in various degrees narrow : this or that profession or
branch of trade.

So much for appropriate intellectual and active aptitude: and now
comes moral.

Youth— is it not the season of virtue? Youth—is it not the season of excitement?
In every man is not youth the season at which, if at any enthusiasm is
capable of getting the better of cold calculation? Is it not the season, if
any one there be, of generous of expanded, of patriotic, of philanthropic, sentiments? Youth— is it not the season of self sacrifice?

Assuming that this same exclusionary arrangement is an erroneous one, let us
consider what the error can have had for its source or sources. Whence then
comes it? Not from reasoning : not from experiences. From what then? From
superficial views, from authority begotten prejudice, from custom begotten prejudice,
from particular and sinister interest, from interest - begotten prejudice.

The superficial view you have laid before you already—the vague and underexamined
notion of the connection between wisdom and age.

Next comes the authority begotten prejudice, followed by the custom begotten
prejudice—the prejudice derived from the practice of the Romans of the
earliest antiquity ; and in most of the countries which from a state of barbarism
had the good fortune to be by their dominion brought into a state of comparative
civilization continued as was natural, from those down to the present
times : the Romans-that people, with whose shapeless, undigested, incomplete, inadequate,
inapposite, ill-suited, substitute to positive and intelligible
law the nations of modern times, and even, after all that has been done,- even you
continue in so large a proportion encumbered. With them as with you
a man was not admitted to the independent conduct of his own person or his own property
earlier than at the age of five and twenty years. But what is that to the purpose?
next to nothing. By any application made of it to the present purpose, two
things are assumed : What the retardation thus made by the appointment
of so late an age was formed on reason; 2. That the reason which had
place in those times have place and apply with adequate force in these times.
But you have seen that so far at least as regards the public trust in
question the retardation was not even at that time founded in reason; and
even if it were, still it would not follow that so it is in these modern
times.

This arrangement was coupled with another which casts discredit
on it : at that same age of 25, notwithstanding the capacity given
him of managing his own pecuniary concerns, a man stood
subjected to the absolute dominion of his father, liable to be
put to death by him at any time. What do I say? liable at
that age? Yes : and even to the end of life.

In a word the example this exhibited in those ancient times is
not opposite : the example you have been seeing exhibited by
these modern times is opposite.

Identifier: | JB/023/103/002 "JB/" can not be assigned to a declared number type with value 23.
Date_1		Marginal Summary Numbering
Box	023	Main Headings	lord brougham displayed
Folio number	103	Info in main headings field
Image	002	Titles
Category	copy/fair copy sheet	Number of Pages	2
Recto/Verso	recto	Page Numbering	e2 / e5
Penner	james mill	Watermarks	street & co 1830
Marginals		Paper Producer	antonio alcala galiano
Corrections		Paper Produced in Year	1830
Notes public		ID Number	7974
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