All who instructed youths were to emphasize “the principles of piety, justice, and a sacred regard to truth, love of their country, humanity and universal benevolence, sobriety, industry and frugality, charity, moderation and temperance, and those other virtues which are the ornament of human society, and the basis upon which the republican Constitution is structured." The students needed to learn that such virtues tended "to preserve and perfect a republican Constitution and to secure the blessings of liberty, as well as to promote future happiness." And students must also be made to understand that the vices that undermined such virtues had a marked tendency "to produce slavery and ruin."
Alexander, John K.; Samuel Adams: The Life of an American Revolutionary
(p. 259). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Kindle Edition.
