[5] “In many points he (Dr. Arnold) took the institution (the authority of the Sixth Form) as he found it, and as he remembered it at Winchester. The responsibility of checking bad practices without the intervention of the Master, the occasional settlement of difficult cases of school-government, the triumph of order over brute force involved in the maintenance of such an authority, had been more or less produced under the old system both at Rugby and elsewhere. But his zeal in its defence, and his confident reliance upon it as the keystone of his whole government, were eminently characteristic of himself, and were brought out the more forcibly from the fact that it was a point on which the spirit of the age set strongly and increasingly against him, on which there was a general tendency to yield to the popular outcry, and on which the clamour, that at one time assailed him, was ready to fasten as a subject where all parties could concur in their condemnation. But he was immoveable: and though, on his first coming, he had felt himself called upon rather to restrain the authority of the Sixth Form from abuses, than to guard it from encroachments, yet now that the whole system was denounced as cruel and absurd, he delighted to stand forth as its champion; the power, which was most strongly condemned, of personal chastisement vested in the PrÆpostors over those who resisted their authority, he firmly maintained as essential to the general support of the good order of the place; and there was no obloquy, which he would not undergo in the protection of a boy, who had by due exercise of this discipline made himself obnoxious to the school, the parents, or the public.”—Stanley’s Life and Correspondence of Dr. Arnold, Vol. I. page 105. See also Arnold’s Miscellaneous Works—On the Discipline of Public Schools: page 371, &c.[7] “Corporal punishment, it is said, is degrading. I well know of what feeling this is the expression; it originates in that proud notion of personal independence which is neither reasonable nor Christian, but essentially barbarian. It visited Europe in former times with all the curses of the age of chivalry, and is threatening us now with those of Jacobinism.” Arnold’s Miscellaneous Works, page 365.[8] “It is idle to say that the Masters form, or can form, this government; it is impossible to have a sufficient number of Masters for the purpose; for, in order to obtain the advantages of home government, the boys should be as much divided as they are at their respective homes. There should be no greater number of schoolfellows living under one Master than of brothers commonly living under one Parent: nay, the number should be less, inasmuch as there is wanting that bond of natural affection which so greatly facilitates domestic government, and gives it its peculiar virtue. Even a father with thirty sons, all below the age of manhood, and above childhood, would find it no easy matter to govern them effectually—how much less can a Master govern thirty boys, with no natural bond to attach them either to him or to one another! He may indeed superintend their government of one another; he may govern them through their own governors; but to govern them immediately, and at the same time effectively, is, I believe, impossible. And hence, if you have a large boarding-school, you cannot have it adequately governed without a system of fagging.”—Dr. Arnold, as above, page 372.[21] “Public Schools are by no means faultless institutions; but, if there is one vice of which they have to a wonderful extent shaken themselves free of late, it is that of gross bullying and oppression: and this great improvement is owing mainly to the happy working of that institution which makes the ruling body in the School one which owes its acknowledged authority, not to inches or to sinews, or to boyish truculence, but to activity of mind, industry, and good conduct. Ask any ‘little fellow’ from Eton, Harrow, or Rugby, whether he is bullied at School; he will probably answer, ‘No:’ if ‘Yes,’ ask him by whom; and he will tell you that it is by some bigger or stronger fellow in his own part of the School—one who neither is nor ever will be a member of the ‘decemvirate,’ but who annoys him because he is industrious, or won’t do Latin verses for his more stupid neighbour, or ‘gets above him’ in form, and who dare not use his brute strength upon him within sight or hearing of any Sixth-form fellow. But it ought to be idle to say this after all that Arnold has done and written, after all that hundreds have seen and read of,” &c. &c.—Correspondent of the Spectator, December 17, 1853.