Whether we shall presently be discussing a Juvenile Magna Charta or
Declaration of Rights by way of including children in the Constitution
is a question on which I leave others to speculate. But if it could
once be established that a child has an adult's Right of Egress from
uncomfortable places and unpleasant company, and there were children's
lawyers to sue pedagogues and others for assault and imprisonment, there
would be an amazing change in the behavior of schoolmasters, the quality
of school books, and the amenities of school life. That Consciousness of
Consent which, even in its present delusive form, has enabled Democracy
to oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its vulgarities and
stupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and ignorances, would operate as
powerfully among children as it does now among grown-ups. No doubt the
pedagogue would promptly turn demagogue, and woo his scholars by all the
arts of demagogy; but none of these arts can easily be so dishonorable
or mischievous as the art of caning. And, after all, if larger liberties
are attached to the acquisition of knowledge, and the child finds
that it can no more go to the seaside without a knowledge of the
multiplication and pence tables than it can be an astronomer without
mathematics, it will learn the multiplication table, which is more than
it always does at present, in spite of all the canings and keepings in.