WINCHESTER "'FUNDING."
[To THE EDITOR OF THE"SPECTATOR?] SIR,—Your doubt whether it can be right "for public school- masters to teach their scholars, who will be the magistrates of the next generation, contempt for the authority" of the law of assault is not merely theoretical. 1 believe,,the habit of considering physical violence as a thing licensed within certain limits, and easily con- doned when it exceeds those limits, is so formed in our schoolboys that they never get rid of it. It is notorious that most magistrates are as little disposed to punish assaults as they are ready to visit with severity pilfering in the towns or poaching in the country, and especially is this the case when the subject of the personal violence is a woman or a child. The most trivial provocation is then accepted as so good an excuse for the most brutal cruelty, that the offence is condoned by a nominal fine, when it deserves imprison- ment. The complaint that some weak victim has been savagely treated by a strong man seems too often to excite in the magistrate that enthusiasm for "judicious kicking," and so on, of which we have had so many specimens lately from respectable people, all unconscious that they are but gratifying the instincts of the savage which still sleep in them.—I am, Sir, &c., A MAGISTRATE.
Previous page
