ABUSES AT PIIIILIC SCHOOLS.
Sin—I should be sorry indeed were the dust raised by Mr. Cookeeley's angry denunciation of your review of his " Pinder," to obscure the important question you so pertinently raised in that review, namely, whether the me- thod of instruction pursued in our public schools is Calculated to teach a sound knowledge of even Latin and Greek, and whether it does not fail egsegiouely in " trainiak tlie mental faculties of our youth." Many of your readers will watch with extreme anxiety the furtherdiscussion of this in- tending subject, so appropriate to your columns. I would, however, solicit our attention to another feature of our public school system which I con- ieve to be not unworthy of your regard. I will not offend the public pre- dilection for flogging and fagging still deemed so indispensable in English education, though flogging is proscribed as a punishment too degrading for brutes who kick their wires and abuse women and children ; but I would entreat you to lend me space while I describe a very fashionable discipline deserving.of more notoriety than it enjoys at present, and called a "monitor's whopping.", At one Of our most fashionable public schools, the monitors, a decemvirate, poseess the enviable privilege of inflicting personal chastisement on all their schoolfellaWa ffelb‘v the sixth form and all the sixth form, over thirty in number, have the power of inflicting similar chastisement to all below the filth form. Not a few of the young men so exposed to degradation have en- tered their-nineteenth year. The following example of the system occurred within the last few weeks. A monitor, the son of an eminent public officer, in a dispute with the son of a nobleman about the game of football, con- ceived himself treated with disrespect by his playfellow of the fifth form, and ordered him to go up for punishment into his the monitor's private room. The young nobleman, already in his eighteenth year, old enough for a commission in the Guards, appealed from the monitor to the Head Master; who, however, counselled him in friendly spirit to submit to the rules of the school, lest worse might follow, if that were possible. The junior, thus warned, submitted to more than thirty blows of a cane administered by the mo- nitor with extreme severity. The victim's back, torn and contused by blows repeated with admirable skill, was exhibited to the surgeon of the school: a complaint was made to the Head Master, and the executioner was degraded for abusing his authority. Now, Sir, we naturally inquire, not merely whether such an act is wise and good, but whether it be lawful. Eminent lawyers assure me that it is unlawful, for that " delegatus non potest delegaie." If that be so, may we not wonder that the distinguished men at the head of our public schools—that the governors of those schools, most of whom are Members of either House of Parliament—should teach oung men to be law-breakers who are by and by to become law-makers. Yet on hearing of his son's disgrace, the monitor's father, who should him- self be a judge of the law, at once removed his son from the school, in dis- pleasure at the reproof he had received. Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe might find a less interesting subject than some of our public schools.
SAGITIABILS.
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