" SPARE THE ROD AND SPOIL THE CHILD."
• TUE tragic story which has just been placed before the Criminal Court at Lewes ought to be a lesson to parents and schoolmasters; for it is in truth a thorough anatomy of the " severe" system in the school. Reginald Channel Canceller was the son of a gentle- man somewhat above what may be called the medium of the ranks of life. His parents and other relatives had shared the advan- tages of a good education ; and the father's object was so to en- dow the boy that he should be able to maintain his position in life. Reginald seems to have been born in August, 1844; he was therefore, fourteen years and a few weeks old when he was sent in October last to the school of Mr. Thomas Hopley, at East- bourne, on the coast of Sussex. Reginald was rather a "pecu- liar " boy, apparently short and stout, with a large head, and a somewhat sluggish disposition. "He was," said his brother, " rather an obstinate boy ; " " he was a backward boy : " " he would not readily do what he was told, and figures were a weak point of his." He had been at other schools, and his progress was not satisfactory. Mr. Hopley's school was recommended, and the lad went, as we have said, in October. When he came home for the holidays at Christmas he complained that he had been severely treated ; but the schoolmaster represented that sternness was necessary " to conquer his obstinacy ; " and he was sent back with some degree of parental sanction for stimulating improve- ment by means of the rod. "Spare the rod and spoil the child." Indeed, Reginald had already been somewhat of " a spoilt child ; " he was growing older now, and it was quite necessary, as the saying is, to turn over a new leaf. Unluckily there was something more than obstinacy about him : he had a dull brain ; and it is a fact that men of facul- ties far above the average are sometimes unable to handle figures. We remember well an instance of a distinguished writer who was unable to accomplish, with any ordinary quickness or cer- tainty, a common sum in addition. In Reginald's case, how- ever, his incompetency to manage a very simple sum in arith- metic, was imputed to " obstinacy " ; and this " obstinacy " afforded the very last occasion of a conflict between himself and his teacher. A sum was to be executed in the course of which the boy had to say "and 4" ; but he could not manage it. After his death the reason was discovered: he had water on the brain. His mind was incapable of forming the idea which was to have been uttered by the words. There was every reason why he should obey the order ; he was alone with his master, he had al- ready undergone a severe beating in the schoolroom, and the cas- tigation was renewed in the bedroom—his beating, in fact, had lasted for nearly two hours. There stood the tutor, stick or rope in hand, no help near. The surface on the youth's back and limbs had literally been " beaten to a jelly," the violence having in some parts destroyed the organization of the tissues. The last act reported of him is that he laid his head against the school- master's breast, and asked to be allowed to say his lesson. The nervous excitement of torture may have worked up his diseased brain to perceive the idea with which for hours he had been struggling ; but the effort was too much : the boy died. Such were the last two hours of the training which had begun six months back. The descriptions of the blood,—the picture of the body, blackened and lacerated,—the sudden silence of death after the cries of agony,—the sounds of washing, as the patient wife was endeavouring to obliterate the traces of the man- slaughter,—all these things suggest ideas far less "willful than the fearful struggle of a feeble mind, under tortures, striving to attain that which was impossible. And that struggle had lasted for six months, growing worse and worse, until it ended in death It looks like the work of a fiend, and we turn to see how it was that the homicide had been provoked to his crime. He has told the story very significantly in his own defence. He began by assuming that the deceased was " a very peculiar boy," not only " very obstinate," but actuated by a " determination not to learn anything." " He did not know the difference, or pretended not to know, between a shilling, a sixpence, and a fourpenny-piece." Hence the schoolmaster found it absolutely necessary that he should master the boy's "propensities," and he "resolved, with great regret to do so with severe punishment." On the day in ques- tion he beat his pupil until he " subdued " him ; and " he then said his lesson rapidly and correctly." But the fit returned, and "feeling that if he had given in it might have ruined the boy for ever," the schoolmaster again punished him, and " succeeded in subduing him," It is obvious from this narrative that assuming the obstinacy to be the result of a bad propensity instead of disease, Mr. Hopley had committed himself to a conflict, and had made it a point of conscience, if not of honour, that he should
" conquer." Now there are amongst boys some of a disposition determined against coercion, that they will rather die than
yield ; and even if such a child had been in health, it would have been impossible for Mr. Replay or any other teacher, however scientific, to measure beforehand the proportion of his own reso- lution or of the boy's obduracy,—even genuine obduracy. Accord- ing to his own. account, therefore, Mr. Hopley had become involved in a trial of will against will, of which he could not tell the con- z3equenees.
The schoolmaster also did something more. He wrote that " the deceased expressed himself grateful, and went to bed." Now the servant girl who overheard the contest told the-Court that the boy " kept screaming and crying while he was being beaten, but
all of a sudden there was a complete stillness in the room ; and about ten minutes afterwards there was a slushing of water." Mr. Hopley described how the boy lay down peaceably ; and he gave that description to Dr. Locock ; expressly affirming that the boy was not faint. When Dr. Locock asked him what all that splashing of water was about, he said, " he thought he re- membered knocking down a jug of water." And when asked if there was blood about the place, "he turned pale, made no reply, and after standing still for a minute or so, took up his hat and went out of the room." Mr. Hopley had come to Dr. Locock to ask for a sort of certificate, declaring that Reginald was "likely to have died of diseased heart. The unhappy schoolmaster, there- fore, had not only committed himself to a hopeless conflict with the stubboruness of disease, but he had become involved in pre- varication and falsehood ; and he went about begging for pro- fessional testimony to confirm the falsehood with which he tried to veil the crime of manslaughter.
The verdict of "guilty" was a matter of course; the sentence of four years' penal servitude, although it occasioned some sur- prise, is ratified by public opinion, as a wholesome warning to schoolmasters who undertake, by brute force, to " conquer" the obstinacy of their pupils, that the enterprise may lead them into acts which end in manslaughter and the convict's prisoh.
The example may have its use. It is not every boy subjected to torture in order to conquer a stubborn disposition or brighten a dull intellect that gains the ultimate advantage of a coroner's inquest. If we cast the mind's eye over the great living map of England, we may assume that there are countless children, girls as well as boys, undergoing a process in principle and spirit ex- actly like that which has consigned young Canceller to the grave and his schoolmaster to the gaol. Nor is Hopley's mistake con- fined to schools : the problem that he has been set to work ex post facto in his four years' confinement has for many years en- gaged, and is still engaging, all the intellect that the Navy can muster ; with much progress, however, towards a happy solution. And, coming back to domestic life, although the English husband has upon the whole given up the cherished notion that it was his privilege to use a stick if it were no bigger than his thumb, it is still the fact that English husbands, like Francis of Naples, hold the rope and the stick as necessary if not essential auxiliaries to authority. And what is more, we have unhappy reason to know that this view of marital privilege rises even- to the rank of life which poor Mr. Hopley represents. Four years' penal servi- tude is a result of sttch authority which must strike even the dullest Hopley of any class with a new aspect of the whole question.
But we must not forget that the Hopleys are what they have been made, and that the general culpnt ," Society" itself must bear some portion of the penalty. As indeed it does. For al- though we cannot bring up Society, as we sometimes pretend we do, at "the bar of public opinion" and so forth, nor inflict upon it the penalty of four years' penal servitude, Society's own con- science and understanding, to say nothing of its flesh and blood, consign it to an amount of suffering precisely correlative to the wrong done. And if we find any excuses for erring Society, they are precisely the same which must be extended to Hopley in com- mon with the vnlgarest resident of her Majesty's gaol. Trace back the wrong to its origin, and you will invariably discover some deficiency, either of training or of natural faculty. In the very case before us we detect far less of any malignity than of something for which we can find no common name so fitting as stupidity. Even the falsehood with which the homicide endea- voured to shield himself showed some natural or educational de- fect of understanding ; for he did not perceive that when he had approached what might have been the last act of the tragedy,— the death of the boy,—the very best thing of all was to go straight to the next clergyman, as the conscience magistrate of the dis trict, and tell him the whole story ; thus making confession to- wards the rulers of the world, immortal as well as mortal. When schoolmasters flog their pupils, they confess a stupid incapacity which makes them, by preference, handle the familiar but vulgar and rude engine of force in place of the searching and resistless influence.
power of " fluence.
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