Hence arises the old custom of _fagging_. It is a memento of Monitorial authority; a standing memorial of the subjection of the younger to the elder for higher purposes than any merely personal distinction. It is the daily assertion, in a form which makes it palpable and felt, of a power which has been instituted for the good not of the superior but of the inferior in the relation. This is the _ordinary_ assertion of Monitorial power. But there must also be some method of punishing disobedience, insubordination, turbulence, or other transgression. To give the Monitors no executive power beyond that of reporting and complaining, would be to leave them practically defenceless. Such a power would possess no influence with a community of Boys. It would be trifled with and trampled upon. Great and long must be the provocation which would overcome the natural repugnance of an honourable Boy to lodging a complaint with a Master against a Schoolfellow: and what would be the redress when it came? Such a remedy would be, in the popular feeling of a Public School, far worse than none. Shall the power entrusted to the Monitors be that of “setting punishments” (as it is technically called)—that is, of imposing tasks of _writing_? Such has been the prerogative formally conferred upon the Monitors of Harrow: but it is easy to see how speedily such a right, if widely exercised, would come into collision with ordinary School duties; how impossible it would be for it to coexist with the _similar_ power of the _Masters_, or even with the performance of the regular work and exercises of the several Forms. Or shall the right of punishing be made to depend upon the physical power of the individual Monitor? Shall an older and stronger Monitor be at liberty to enforce his authority by blows, while a weaker and younger is left defenceless? Such a rule would be, in effect, an awkward and inconsistent return to a state of things which it is the one object of the Monitorial government to counteract—a system of brute force. Under _any_ constitution of a School, the stronger can protect himself against the aggression of the weaker: it is the object of the Public School system to substitute for the brute force of the stronger the legalized power of the better and the abler. Unless therefore the power entrusted to the Monitor be something different in kind from that of physical strength, the whole system falls to the ground by losing its essential characteristic.