BARBARISM IN ENGLISH EDUCATION. 675 



this occasion, rebelled, rescued the victim, and fell upon the prefects, 

 and cuffed and kicked them out of the Commons' Hall. After the 

 boy had sufficiently recovered, he was publicly flogged by Dr. Wil- 

 liams for having resented a prefect ! " An Old Winchester Prefect " 

 gives similar testimony, and adds that the system is " an indefensible 

 and barbarous practice," which should be ended at once and forever." 



The system is as vigorously defended. " An Old School Discipli- 

 narian " believes tunding to be infinitely better than caning by a mas- 

 ter and less dangerous than knuckle-hitting on the head ; " save me 

 from sly kicks and boxes." The system creates good feeling between 

 the seniors and juniors gives the former responsibility ; the latter 

 protection from bullies and is " a good training for the world." In- 

 stead of making boys " weak milksops," it makes them " Englishmen 

 like their ancestors." " A Wykehamist " is proud of the old school, 

 and believes that prefects are high-minded, deliberate, and just. His 

 family had been connected with Winchester for fifty years, and he had 

 never before heard a complaint. 



" W." thinks the less a master "thrashes" the better it takes a 

 rare man to counterbalance the mischief done by " perpetual lickings." 

 When the boys do the flogging, the result is very different. They 

 know each other's tricks and ways, and can be more just. The system 

 protects boys from brutality. When in school he was brutally kicked 

 by a big bully whenever sent above him in class. Such treatment 

 was not possible at Winchester. " The great distinguishing character 

 of every judiciously-managed English school is, that the boys are sure 

 of being properly kicked ! . . . By all means let the masters control 

 the system and effectually punish its abuse, but as 'kicking' will go 

 on in every big school, let my boys go where it is reduced to a system, 

 in the hands of a recognized class." 



" A Civilian," one of Dr. Arnold's Rugby boys, is gratified that, 

 while many see no cure for the abuse of the system but its abolition, 

 others see a good use in the government of the public schools through 

 prefects. He was six and a half years at Rugby, and only knew two or 

 three cases of gross injustice or cruelty, but remembers scores of cases 

 of sharp caning of " fags " for impertinence, neglect of duty, etc. " This 

 punishment was infinitely preferred to one hundred lines of Homer 

 or Virgil." Under this system, hundreds of boys govern themselves 

 " without the continued interference of the eminent man at the head of 

 the school." 



"Expertus" contrasts, at length, the monitorial or prefectorial 

 system with the " system of lock and key, usher and spy, and Jesuitical 

 surveillance." While the former is liable to abuse and needs to be 

 carefully guarded, it is " wonderfully strong in the argument from gen- 

 eral success, from the characters which it has helped to train, and from 

 the qualities it has naturalized in Englishmen." 



A former " Acting Head-Master at Rugby," Sir Bonamy Brice, 



