so far as the system will allow if he is not, the consequences are the total failure of the school for the life of one man, which may include the school-lives of several successive generations of boys. We are not yet sanguine enough to hope that the state will very soon undertake the greatest of all its moral obligations; nor do we wish to see a general school-reform attempted till the matter has undergone still further discussion. At present there are many new and imperfectly digested notions abroad, which require time in order to fashion themselves into a shape adapted to practice. The present political condition of this country is very unfavourable to reform of our institutions of education; and the various causes of this unfavourable condition may be resolved into one single cause-too great liberty. The various members which compose the sovereign power have no unity of purpose, and this disunion in the sovereign power shows itself in all the various forms of delegated power, in all institutions of education of all kinds, in every religious sect, in every private establishment of education. The liberty which all these several members mean, when they talk of liberty, is, the liberty of doing as they please, that is, the liberty of frustrating the main ends of a political community. The universities claim the liberty of admitting into these places (so-called) of public instruction whom they please, and of shutting out whom they please; the established church wishes to have the liberty of educating all the poor in its own way; the trustees and masters of endowed schools claim the liberty of managing them as they think best; and the proprietors of private establishments would, taken in the mass, cry out against any wise measures which should compel them to edu

cate themselves before they educate others.* When we look about us for the means of putting this chaos into order, of checking all these liberties which are only so many mutual aggressions, we find among the contending elements of disorder no one which is yet powerful enough to control the rest. In the United States much ignorance and many absurd notions still prevail, and the liberty we have talked of has been abundantly active in producing mischief; but there is still this important contrast between them and us-the unity of sovereign power in the separate states for the purposes of the state government. The people only require to know that a thing is good, and the opinion may immediately be made practical. In Prussia, a wise government determines what is best for the people in matters of education, and compels them, for their own good, to a certain line of conduct. In Englaud, half a dozen powers contend for the mastery, among which it would be difficult to say which of them, just at present, might most safely be intrusted with the power of reforming education. If there is any hope at all of beneficial change, it is in the Commous' House, operated upon by a profound conviction among those who are commonly called the middle classes of society. To produce this conviction should be the aim of every man who values the happi

By this we mean that no teacher should be allowed to teach, without having undergone a previous examination and having received a certificate of competency. On this question there is much difference of opinion even among those who are in favour of a school reform; and the question is not without its difficulties. Many of the objections which we have seen made to this proposition arise from certain confused notions of the nature of the sovereign power in a state, which we have no disposition to confute here, or indeed anywhere else.

ness, the peace, the safety of this country,-of every man who believes that the education of youth is the most important part and the basis of all civil polity.

A subordinate part of our subject remains to be briefly noticed; the mode in which a master can ensure obedience to his laws. With a proper classification of pupils, and with masters trained to their business, the maintenance of discipline in the school would be an easy consequence of a good system. In the present state of schools, it must be a more difficult task. A government which subsists by violence and physical force, always causes more trouble to the governors than one in which the governors avail themselves of all the means of government which exist in the sympathies of our common nature.

It must be laid down as an unvarying rule, that a school not strictly under the rule of a master cannot be a good school; if the master cannot maintain his authority without blows, it is better that he should use blows than let his scholars be disobedient. It is also better that the punishment, whatever it may be, should be fixed and certain, in case of disobedience, than that it should vary with the caprice of one or more masters. Corporal punishment, or the infliction of bodily pain, is not the instrument of government in English schools only; it is the great means of government, though in different degrees, in political communities all over the world, and its frequent and indiscriminate application to offences seems to be pretty nearly in proportion to the state of barbarism in each country. Thus, in Turkey, the stick is, and still more was, the great instrument by which society was kept in order; and conformably to this high state principle, the stick is

the instrument with which a Mussulman schoolmaster rules the young disciples of Mohammed*. The adoption of so universal an instrument of rule must have its foundation in some principles of our nature as universal, and these principles are ignorance and lazi ness. The stick is an argument that is irresistible so long as it is wielded by a strong arm; it appeals to one feeling only, which all men have, and a very natural one too, a desire to avoid pain; it is encumbered with no complicated principles, which require reflection and analysis; it admits no motive short of it, and none beyond it; in fine, its arguments are irresistible when they can be enforced, and powerless when they cannot.

It is said, by a Wykehamist, that the idea of severe corporal punishment being ever now used in this country is a Blue Beard story, and that such assertions are ridiculous. In such matters it is always safer for a man to speak within the limits of his own knowledge, to say that in all the schools known to the objector there is no such thing, for other people have the same claim to credit when they assert the contrary. We say that corporal punishment in schools is often very severe; that blows, more than is good for the health, are often inflicted, and in large schools too, and we admit no claim of any one man to say that he knows the state of all the schools in England, when we know that his statements are not true of some schools known to us. But we contend that corporal punishment, to be of any use, must sometimes be severe; if not severe enough to frighten the boys into obedience, what is the use of it? If it is a proper thing in any case for a master to * See Journal of Education, No. XVIII., p. 365, ' Foreign News.'

inflict a blow upon a boy, it is clear that blows should vary in force and number, according to the nature of the offence; and the offence being great, the blows ought to be many and hard. If this is not admitted, on what principle are blows to be inflicted? Surely not according to the mere caprice of the master. In arguing this question of flogging, we are supposing a system in which blows are the governing principle, for we conceive it impossible for any man to defend a system of flogging in which there is no system at all. We have always considered the systematic flogging of public schools (bating the indecency* of it) to be better than the capri

* Those who know nothing of the English public schools, as they are termed, cannot well express their surprise when they hear for the first time the manner in which punishment is inflicted in these schools, and sometimes inflicted on boys of the age of seventeen or eighteen. We were not aware, till we set about making more particular inquiries, that the mode of inflicting this punishment varies considerably in our endowed schools. Nor did we know that it exists in some of very little note and reputation in these schools, as we might expect, it appears in its worst form. In some schools the punishment is always inflicted in public before the school, which appears to be the least objectionable plan. The boy, who is to be flogged, looses his breeches, and the master pulls out the shirt so as to expose the lower part of the back, on which he operates with a birch rod. In some other schools it is generally done in private, and it is probably in that case more severe and less decent. But in such schools it is sometimes done in public also, when the nature of the case seems to require it. A friend informs us, that during the time he was at the Charter House, some years ago, a boy in the sixth form, and eighteen years of age, was required to loose his breeches in medio, that is, before the whole school, preparatory to being flogged. In some schools the posteriors are completely exposed during the ceremony of whipping, and this before the eyes of all. It is difficult to say what custom will not reconcile us to: there can be no doubt that this indecent exposure, which would shock one not used to it, produces little or no effect where it prevails.

The consequence of disobedience to an order for loosing the breeches would be expulsion, and, under the circumstances, a proper consequence; for we admit, as readily as any of our opponents may contend for it, the absolute necessity of the boys