This belief would not under any
circumstances improve their manners, and at this time it only caused them
to despise still more those who seemed willing to withdraw all claim to
authority over them. Precocity, which had never been a popular trait, came
to the front with no modesty to relieve its disagreeable character.
"But the conduct of the youth of both sexes was not confined to the
exhibition of bad manners, nor to the mere passive indulgence of an
undutiful spirit. These led gradually to a more serious phase of the
rebellion, the inauguration of a series of petty annoyances, to be
followed, naturally, by acts of downright injustice and cruelty. It seemed
as if the old years of oppression to which, in a ruder age, the children
had been subjected, were about to be repeated, with the parents for the
victims. You must not suppose that these vast changes came about in the
course of one generation. Just as a sentiment in favor of liberty will be
perpetuated in a people from one generation to another, and increase with
the lapse of years, so this feeling of independence of parental control
and this decadence of natural affection were transmitted from one set of
children to the next, and matters grew from bad to worse.
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