In an excellent article in _Temple Bar_(November 1864) on flogging in the army, the following sensible remarks occur:--"In nearly a quarter of a century's experience with soldiers, the writer has always, and without a single exception, found flogging makes a good man bad, and a bad man worse." With equal truth it may be said that, without a single exception, flogging makes a good boy bad, and a bad boy worse. How many men owe their ferocity to the canings they received when school-boys! The early floggings hardened and soured them, and blunted their sensibility. Dr Arnold of Rugby, one of the best schoolmasters that England ever produced, seldom caned a boy--not more than once or twice during the half year; but when he did cane him, he charged for the use of the cane each time in the bill, in order that the parents might know how many times their son had been punished. At some of our public schools now-a-days, a boy is caned as many times in a morning as the worthy doctor would have caned him during the whole half year; but then, the doctor treated the boys as gentlemen, and trusted much to their honour; but now many schoolmasters trust much to fear, little to honour, and treat them as brute beasts. It might be said that the discipline of a school cannot be maintained unless the boys be frequently caned, that it must be either caning or expulsion. I deny these assertions. Dr Arnold was able to conduct his school with honour to himself, and with immense benefit to the rising generation, without either frequent canings or expulsions. The humane plan, however, requires at first both trouble and patience; and trouble some schoolmasters do not like, and patience they do not possess; the use of the cane is quick, sharp, decisive, and at the time effective. If caning be ever necessary, which it might occasionally be, for the telling of lies for instance, or for gross immorality, let the head master himself be the only one to perform the operation, but let him not be allowed to delegate it to others. A law ought in all public schools to be in force to that effect. High time that something were done to abate such disgraceful practices. Never should a schoolmaster, or any one else, be allowed, _on any pretence whatever_, to strike a boy upon his head. Boxing of the ears has sometimes caused laceration of the drum of the ear, and consequent partial deafness for life. Boxing of the ears injures the brain, and therefore the intellect.