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section of criminals condemned to death. It is worthy of note that the passage of this law was urgently demanded on the ground that experiments on living animals are misleading and useless, and that they must therefore be performed upon living human beings! These cases furnish positive proof, if any be required, of the brutalising and demoralising effect of the practice of vivisection, which ultimately destroys all moral sense, and renders its votaries utterly callous and insensible to human, as well as animal, suffering. Such persons would be quite ready to vivisect human beings if they dared, and they are only prevented from doing so now by fear of the law and public opinion.

The working classes of this country have already begun to regard the hospitals with suspicion and distrust; many of them are aware that patients are experimented upon in foreign hospitals, and they are not unreasonably afraid of being similarly treated when they have to go to hospital here. Hence it is very probable that when the British working men fully understand the danger to which they and their families are exposed in consequence of the present rage for experimenting on living creatures, they will demand the total prohibition of vivisection, and no Government will venture to refuse. We should then see a wonderful conversion taking place among the classes who now support this practice. Medical men (many of whom are already against it) would hasten to disavow it, the clergy would discover that it is (as Lord Shaftesbury said) an abominable sin, and politicians would perceive that it is contrary to public policy, and must be put an end to. It is to be hoped that the medical profession as a body will perceive the advisability, and indeed the necessity, of giving up vivisection of their own accord, and will thus avoid the humiliation of being compelled by law to abandon it.

J. H. THORNton.

THE "ULTIMA RATIO" OF THE

SECONDARY SCHOOL

Aut disce, aut discede: manet sors tertia . . .

Winchester Maxim.

MANY of our readers must have seen Mr. Dooley's caustic remarks in the Westminister Gazette on the demand of New York teachers for the power of the stick. "They say," in effect he tells his friend Hennessy, "they can't thrain thim tindher young shoots without they hammer them wid a club." And he expresses his opinion that the process would require a special course of study, which might well be imparted by letting the aspirant take his coat off and stand up to a professional pugilist.

The voracious clamour of men who have tasted power for more and more of it is a commonplace of history. The clamour of the New York teachers is echoed here. And the demand of the teachers for the easy and brutal discipline of beating is supported by the reckless assertion that the stick is the normal penalty in English secondary schools. It is with some hope of refuting this fallacy by the simple statement of facts that I draw upon these memories of a typical grammar school at which I spent eight years, marked, if not by diligence, by some propensity for critical observation.

What is really at the back of the mind of those who talk so glibly about severity of discipline in secondary schools is the once universal use of birching in the great public schools. Eton, though a most abnormal institu

tion-I speak in humility as a stranger-is the type and norm, to the ignorant, of English secondary education. And the once constant resort to the birch by masters of whom Keate is the accepted representative, has firmly fixed it in the public mind that a good education means plenty of thrashing.

Others must speak of public-school practice. My duty is only to point out that, whatever it may be, it represents only a modicum of the total sum of practice in the secondary schools of the country, and to put forward in as few words as may be the system as I found it. The school of which I shall speak was, I think, typical. It was one of those ancient grammar schools which are now being fast converted into institutions for commercial training-a fate which I believe has overtaken this particular academy within the last few years. It was the only good school in a medium-sized town inhabited by a self-reliant and plain-spoken population. It drew its scholars from varied social strata. The Colonel's son and the small shopkeeper's shouldered home amicably together after five; scholarships brought a few boys from poorer homes, and if they were good fellows, they were absorbed into the body politic; if not, not. The head-master was, in the hackneyed phrase, "a scholar and a gentleman,” and it always struck one as tragically incongruous that a scholar and a gentleman should ever personally devote himself to the questionable business of hammering unresisting small boys with a stick. His assistants-courteous, agreeable men in private life-also seemed curiously out of place when they lifted the cane (as once or twice they did) against the boy with whom they had been chatting the day before.

It was a school where the tone was clean and decent. There was no cruelty to animals, and very little bullying. The preparatory school of little fellows in the same town was fifty times worse in these respects. Athletics were, as they always are, highly thought of. But that did not

prevent the aristocracy of the school from being formed on a basis of character and intellect. There was a set in the sixth form who had literary and musical tastes, and who stood entirely outside of the school games. They were the most looked up to, and had far the most influence, of anyone. Whilst the writer was at the place these two phenomena proceeded side by side-increasing athletic success, and increasing influence of the unathletic seniors. I do not pretend to explain the fact.

So much for the school, which I suppose was very like other schools. We come to the facts of its daily discipline. And I affirm that during my eight years (the average number of pupils being some sixty or seventy) I can only recall the occurrence of twelve cases of an application of the cane. There were, indeed, a few other times when the head made a sudden incursion into the sixth-form room and retired with a cane, after which we heard sounds of suggestiveness from the next apartment. But say these were as many again-that gives twenty-four in all, or an average of three per year. I make the pro-whipper a present of six more per year out of pure philanthropy. I concede that there may have been some fifty executions at which I was not present. I am sure there were none which I have forgotten, for the details of each scene are before me now. And what does it come to? One caning a month!

This is not very like the picture conjured up by zealous members of the National Union of Teachers, who tell us that the cane is employed for every fault in secondary schools, and bid us contemplate a daily (or hourly) fusillade of malaccas. And the causes for which the poor little minimum of one a month was administered were very special.

One was flat disobedience to a personal order. This the Doctor never would tolerate. The first and the worst case of caning I witnessed was that of a good-natured, not too bright, slenderly-made boy, for this cause. He had made an elementary slip in class. The head, who

VOL. IX.

H

possessed a sense of humour which was likewise elementary, ordered him sardonically to inquire the proper answer from the top boy of the lowest class. The boy had only just joined the school, and he was unacquainted with the master's peculiar methods. He (absurdly enough) thought the order insulting, and shuffled helplessly about. A brighter, or more impudent, youth would have saved the situation by a frank appeal to the head's generosity, or by swaggering over to the lower form. This one had not it in him.

The order was repeated. At first bantering, it was now dictatorial. It only confirmed Angus in his powerlessness to act. The head-master turned sharply and went for a He held it over Angus and repeated the command. Then he brought it down again and again.

cane.

"Now, sirrah, will you go?"

But Angus had not had enough. And the same process was gone through more than once more, until the boy turned with streaming eyes and walked slowly down as he was told. It was a clear victory of matter over mind.

His brother (and brothers, somehow, had a way of incurring the supreme penalty of the law) suffered for precisely the same inertness a year or two later, and the harmony of a music lesson was disturbed because he absolutely declined to sing, having about as much voice as a garden worm.

And I think the same offence was the occasion of wrath in the case of a big fellow of sixteen (also not brilliant) whom I once saw being dealt with in the passage outside our door.

Second in the list of crimes came deliberate insolence. Two boys cried "Shame!" after an unpopular decision imposing a vicarious penalty. They were called out, one angry and contemptuous, the other trembling and terrified, and were soundly beaten-a process obviously inefficacious in the one case and very needless in the other.

Unpunctuality and badly prepared work were never

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