Those who are acquainted with Dr. Arnold’s Life—a book regarded by many as one of authority upon such a subject—are aware that the right of his Sixth Form to the use of the cane was one for which he contended with the greatest earnestness, as indispensable to the efficient working of that Monitorial system to which he considered that Rugby owed so much of its well-being under his Head-Mastership. {5} And although many Masters might shrink from avowing so boldly their approbation of a power liable to so much abuse and to so much misconstruction, yet I have never heard it questioned that the same power is exercised, whether by permission or by acquiescence, in most of the great Public Schools of England, as I know that it existed at Harrow, actually if not avowedly, for very many years before I became Master. But I have no wish to plead authority or prescription in defence of a practice which, if bad, can at any time be abolished, and for the toleration of which I do not deny that the Master under whom it exists may fairly be held responsible. There can be no doubt that a Master who consulted merely his own ease and present popularity would at once abolish the power in dispute. The tide of public feeling is setting strongly in that direction. It would be easy to aggravate that feeling. Corporal punishment of _any_ kind, by whomsoever administered, is inconsistent with modern notions of personal dignity, {7} and modern habits of precocious manliness; it needs nothing but a few cases of exceptional excess in the _infliction_ of such punishment to direct against it a storm too violent to be resisted. If, in the face of this feeling, and amidst so many temptations to yield to it, a Master still ventures to maintain that, liable as it is to abuse, open to misrepresentation, and difficult of explanation, the power of corporal punishment by the Monitors of a Public School is one not lightly to be abolished, because capable of great good and impossible to replace by any efficacious substitute; he may fail to convince—it is probable that he will fail to convince—those who judge of the system from without, and with no opportunity of calmly balancing its evil against its good; but at least he may be believed to speak honestly, and listened to as a disinterested witness. There are in every Public School certain minor offences, against manners rather than against morals—faults of turbulence, rudeness, offensive language, annoyance of others, petty oppression and tyranny, &c.—which, as Public Schools are at present constituted, lie ordinarily out of the cognizance of the Masters, and might, so far as _they_ are concerned, be committed with impunity. {8} Even some _graver_ faults might, with due precautions against discovery, long escape the eye of a really vigilant Master. To meet such cases, there is no doubt a choice of measures.