{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.