My Lord,
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your
Lordship’s letter of the 11th instant; to which your great
abilities and varied experience, as well as your affectionate
attachment to Harrow as the place of your own education, give
peculiar value and interest.
I am grateful for the opportunity which it affords me of
briefly stating the principles of the Monitorial system as at
present established at Harrow.
I do not,
I think, misapprehend the precise point to which your
observations are directed. It is not upon the Monitorial
system itself—upon the commission of a recognized authority
to the hands of the Upper Boys—but upon a particular method
of enforcing it, that you comment in terms of anxiety. The
principle is coeval with the School—established by
the Founder. It is the universal rule of Public
Schools:—until lately, when the experience of its salutary
effects has led to a wider extension of it, it was the one
distinguishing feature of a Public as contrasted with a Private
School.
But the Monitorial system might exist without this particular
method of enforcing it—the power of inflicting corporal
punishment. And this is the question to which your Lordship
has been good enough to call my attention.
Those who are acquainted with Dr. Arnold’s Life—a
book regarded by many as one of authority upon such a
subject—are aware that the right of his Sixth Form to the
use of the cane was one for which he contended with the greatest
earnestness, as indispensable to the efficient working of that
Monitorial system to which he considered that Rugby owed so much
of its well-being under his Head-Mastership. [5] And although many Masters might shrink
from avowing so boldly their approbation of a power liable to so
much abuse and to so much misconstruction, yet I have never heard
it questioned that the same power is exercised, whether by
permission or by acquiescence, in most of the great Public
Schools of England, as I know that it existed at Harrow, actually
if not avowedly, for very many years before I became Master.
But I have no wish to plead authority or prescription in
defence of a practice which, if bad, can at any time be
abolished, and for the toleration of which I do not deny that the
Master under whom it exists may fairly be held responsible.
There can be no doubt that a Master who consulted merely his
own ease and present popularity would at once abolish the power
in dispute. The tide of public feeling is setting strongly
in that direction. It would be easy to aggravate that
feeling. Corporal punishment of any kind, by whomsoever
administered, is inconsistent with modern notions of personal
dignity, [7] and modern habits of precocious
manliness; it needs nothing but a few cases of exceptional excess
in the infliction of such punishment to direct against it
a storm too violent to be resisted.
If, in the face of this feeling, and amidst so many
temptations to yield to it, a Master still ventures to maintain
that, liable as it is to abuse, open to misrepresentation, and
difficult of explanation, the power of corporal punishment by the
Monitors of a Public School is one not lightly to be abolished,
because capable of great good and impossible to replace by any
efficacious substitute; he may fail to convince—it is
probable that he will fail to convince—those who judge of
the system from without, and with no opportunity of calmly
balancing its evil against its good; but at least he may be
believed to speak honestly, and listened to as a disinterested
witness.
There are in every Public School certain minor offences,
against manners rather than against morals—faults of
turbulence, rudeness, offensive language, annoyance of others,
petty oppression and tyranny, &c.—which, as Public
Schools are at present constituted, lie ordinarily out of the
cognizance of the Masters, and might, so far as they are
concerned, be committed with impunity. [8] Even some
graver faults might, with due precautions against
discovery, long escape the eye of a really vigilant Master.
To meet such cases, there is no doubt a choice of
measures.
You may adopt what might with equal propriety be called the
foreign School, or the Private School, system. You may
create a body of Ushers; Masters of a lower order, whose business
it shall be to follow Boys into their hours of recreation and
rest, avowedly as spies, coercing freedom of speech and action,
or reporting to their superior what such observation has
gleaned. This is consistent and intelligible. Ruinous
to that which has been regarded as the great glory of an English
Public School—its free developement of character, its
social expansiveness, in short its liberty: but yet, in
itself, intelligible enough, and in theory perhaps preferable to
the other.
If not this, then the alternative must be some form or other
of the Monitorial principle. Ten, or twenty, or thirty, of those
Boys who are (generally speaking) the elder, at all events the
abler, the more diligent, the more meritorious,—selected by
no favour, exempted from none of the rules and restraints of
School, but yet brought by their position into a more intimate
intercourse with their Master, and largely influenced (if he be
what a Master ought to be) by his principles of judgment and
discipline,—are empowered to exercise over their juniors a
legalized and carefully regulated authority, while at the same
time they are left to mix with them on terms of perfect freedom
at times and in places to which no Master’s inspection
could by possibility extend.
But this system is capable of at least two modifications.
The Monitors may be desired to act as the Master’s
deputies; to observe for him, and to report to him. They
may be charged to see nothing wrong done, to hear nothing wrong
said, without hastening to his presence and invoking his
interposition. They may be taught to regard themselves as
the Master’s spies, informers, and creatures.
Such has been made, sometimes, the theory of their office.
They have been solemnly warned of the responsibility attaching to
their office, as the Master’s eyes and the Master’s
ears. No real power was entrusted to them. The
terms of their commission were large, its tone was solemn: but
the power to enforce obedience either did not exist, or existed
only on sufferance and by stealth.
Now it appears to me that a Monitorial system of this nature
is either nugatory, or worse. If the Monitors thus
commissioned have the ordinary feelings of the sons of Gentlemen,
they will virtually repudiate such an office. They will
say, I was not sent here to be an Usher—a Master’s
spy, a Master’s informer. They have too much
self-respect, too nice a sense of honour, to live amongst their
Schoolfellows on terms of unguarded equality, and then use the
knowledge thus gained as a means of drawing down upon them the
arm of authority and of punishment. The result will be, as
it always has been wherever such a view has been
taken of Monitorial duty, that the Monitors will not act for the
purposes for which they were commissioned, but only for the
maintenance of a selfish dignity which looks for its support to
other means than those recognized by the system.
It astonishes me that those who regard submission to a
corporal punishment as a degradation inconsistent with honour and
self-respect, should look with toleration upon that
antagonist system under which their sons might be called
upon, as the reward of ability and diligence, to assume the
office of a delegated spy.
The alternative—as I believe, the only
alternative—is that form of Monitorial discipline which it
has been my endeavour to carry into vigorous operation at Harrow
during the last nine years.
I have taught the Monitors to regard their authority as
emanating indeed from mine, and responsible to mine, but yet
(with the limitation naturally arising from these two
considerations) independent and free in its ordinary
exercise. They are charged with the enforcement of an
internal discipline, the object of which is the good order, the
honourable conduct, the gentlemanlike tone, of the Houses and of
the School. In these matters I desire that they should act
for themselves; knowing well how doubly, how tenfold, valuable is
that discipline which springs from within the body, in comparison
with that which is imposed upon it from above. It is only
on the discovery of grave and moral offences, such as would be
poisonous to the whole society, and such as they may reasonably
be expected to regard as discreditable and disgraceful even more
than they are illegal, that I expect them to communicate to me
officially the faults of which they may take notice. In
certain cases, it may be optional whether an offence should be
regarded as one against manners or against morals; and in these
instances it will depend upon the accident of the prior
discovery, whether it be taken up by the Monitors or by
myself.
It follows as a matter of necessity that the Monitors should
possess some means of exercising and asserting their
authority.
Hence
arises the old custom of fagging. It is a memento of
Monitorial authority; a standing memorial of the subjection of
the younger to the elder for higher purposes than any merely
personal distinction. It is the daily assertion, in a form
which makes it palpable and felt, of a power which has been
instituted for the good not of the superior but of the inferior
in the relation.
This is the ordinary assertion of Monitorial
power. But there must also be some method of punishing
disobedience, insubordination, turbulence, or other
transgression. To give the Monitors no executive power
beyond that of reporting and complaining, would be to leave them
practically defenceless. Such a power would possess no
influence with a community of Boys. It would be trifled
with and trampled upon. Great and long must be the
provocation which would overcome the natural repugnance of an
honourable Boy to lodging a complaint with a Master against a
Schoolfellow: and what would be the redress when it came?
Such a remedy would be, in the popular feeling of a Public
School, far worse than none.
Shall the power entrusted to the Monitors be that of
“setting punishments” (as it is technically
called)—that is, of imposing tasks of writing?
Such has been the prerogative formally conferred upon the
Monitors of Harrow: but it is easy to see how speedily such a
right, if widely exercised, would come into collision with
ordinary School duties; how impossible it would be for it to
coexist with the similar power of the Masters, or
even with the performance of the regular work and exercises of
the several Forms.
Or shall the right of punishing be made to depend upon the
physical power of the individual Monitor? Shall an older
and stronger Monitor be at liberty to enforce his authority by
blows, while a weaker and younger is left defenceless? Such
a rule would be, in effect, an awkward and inconsistent return to
a state of things which it is the one object of the Monitorial
government to counteract—a system of brute force.
Under any constitution of a School, the stronger
can protect himself against the aggression of the weaker: it is
the object of the Public School system to substitute for the
brute force of the stronger the legalized power of the better and
the abler. Unless therefore the power entrusted to the
Monitor be something different in kind from that of physical
strength, the whole system falls to the ground by losing its
essential characteristic.
And it appears to me that, as soon as the power of the
Monitors is transferred from the ground of strength to that of
right; as soon as it is made, in its place, as the power of the
Masters in theirs, a recognized and constitutional principle; at
that moment all feeling of degradation in submitting to it is
done away: there is degradation, because there is cowardice, in
submitting tamely to the kicks or cuffs of an equal or an
inferior, but there is none in rendering to a Master—nor
need there be in rendering to a constituted authority of a lower
rank—that submission even to personal correction which may
be one of the conditions of the society in which you are
placed.
By a
custom, existing certainly long before my own acquaintance with
Harrow, traceable for many years into the past history of the
School, the common method of enforcing Monitorial authority has
been the use of the cane. A power not formally committed to
the Monitors, not (in the strictest sense) delegated by the
Master, but still exercised without interference or censure
within the limits prescribed by humanity or by the fear of penal
consequences in case of its excess.
This custom, I repeat, I found established; ignored, it may
be, by previous Masters, but not unknown. The question with
me was, Is this custom, which I find in force, injurious in its
use, or only in its abuse? If the former, it must be, not
disavowed only, but destroyed. If the latter, it must be,
not only connived at, but turned to account. It must be
made conducive to the real welfare of the School. And a
Monitor who avails himself of this prescriptive right, in support
of good order and good discipline, must feel that he is safe in
doing so, provided he stops short of inflicting injury. He must feel
that he can depend upon the Master to stand by him, before the
School and before the Public, so long as no wanton or tyrannical
use of this power can be proved against him.
It is urged indeed that this Monitorial power is illegal in a
higher than any School sense of that term,—that it
contradicts the law of the land. “Delegatus non
potest delegare.” The Parent delegates his
power to the Master: the Master has no right to delegate that
power to the Monitor. Now I will not enter into the
question how far the Master is correctly described as the
Parent’s delegate. Doubtless the act which consigns
to him the individual Boy is the act of the individual
Parent. But the Master of a Public School is not made so by
that act, nor by any number of such acts: his office is conferred
upon him by an independent authority, and is exercised under
conditions irrespective of the parental will. Otherwise the
Parent who created, might in each case limit, the right: he might
prescribe to the Master the studies to be pursued and the
punishments to be inflicted; he might depute his own functions thus
far and no further. But, even allowing the justice of the
appellation, it would scarcely be desired, I suppose, to admit
all the consequences involved in this principle, and
assert that the Master has no right to delegate any portion of
his office, but that alone, unaided by coadjutors or
subordinates, he must teach in person every Boy entrusted to him,
hear every lesson, and impose every punishment. The fact
surely is, that the system of a Public School is essentially
peculiar and exceptional; and that, when that system is fairly
established, and its rules publicly notorious, a Parent uses his
own discretion in selecting the School for his son, and having
done so he subjects him to its discipline as established,
retaining only the power of withdrawing him when he will.
But, on the other hand, it is no less necessary, for the sake
alike of the Monitors and of the School, that such checks
shall be imposed upon the exercise of this power as shall make
its abuse either absolutely impossible or at least a very rare
exception.
With
this view, it is one rule of the system, that any Boy has a right
of appeal from the individual Monitor (however high his station)
to the assembled body; who are bound to enter into the merits of
the case, and come to a formal decision upon it. My
experience thus far has led me to believe that ten young men,
acting under such responsibilities, are not likely either to come
to an unjust decision or to execute their sentence with undue
severity.
But if, after all, this hope is in any case disappointed; if
(which in such an event is the most probable supposition) an
individual Monitor has outrun his powers, by not allowing this
appeal to the collective body, or by not waiting for its result,
or by executing punishment himself in undue excitement or
passion; then the duty is cast upon me, of interposing my
authority to redress the injustice, by the degradation of the
offending Monitor, or by a measure of punishment yet more
severe.
This, happily, is a case of rare, most rare,
occurrence. The general testimony, alike of Boys and of
their Parents, will rather be this—that, while the School
has enjoyed, on the whole, under the Monitorial system, a very
real exemption from the miseries of that tyranny of brute force
which it is designed more especially to preclude, it is perfectly
easy, on the other hand, for any Boy to pass through his Harrow
life without once incurring the risk of Monitorial punishment,
while the salutary dread of it has done much to keep him orderly
and tractable, and to save him in no slight degree from the sight
and hearing of evil. [21]
And,
while this is so, however unpopular may be the avowal, I know
that my duty is clear: to watch the operation of the system, to
guard it from abuse, to influence and animate (so far as I may be
able) those who are to take part in it—if necessary, to
coerce and to punish its abuse; but, none the less, to adhere to
it manfully, and to take my full share of its obloquy.
It may be found impossible long to withstand such impressions
as those to which your Lordship has adverted. To persons
unacquainted with its practical operation the Monitorial system
must always appear objectionable; a cumbrous and uncertain
substitute for zeal and vigilance on the part of the
Master. The time may come when public opinion will
imperatively require the introduction of an opposite principle;
of which
it shall be the object to confine and preclude the expression of
evil by the unceasing espionage of an increased staff of
subordinate Masters. The experiment may be tried; I hope
not at Harrow—certainly not by me. I see many
difficulties, some evils, in the present system; some advantages,
many plausibilities, in its opposite: and yet I believe the one
to be practically ennobling and elevating—the other
essentially narrowing, enfeebling, and enervating. I well
foresee the results of the change, come when it may. I know
how pleasing, yet how brief, will be the lull consequent upon the
establishment of a rule of equality and fraternity; how warm
perhaps, for the moment, the congratulations of some who have
trembled for their sons’ safety under the present (so
called) reign of terror; on the other hand, how gradual, yet how
sure, the growth of those meaner and more cowardly vices which a
Monitorial system has coerced where it could not eradicate; and
how impossible the return to that principle of graduated ranks
and organized internal subordination, which, amidst some real and many
imaginary defects, has been found by experience to be inferior to
no other system in the formation of the character of an English
Christian Gentleman.
I have the honour to be, my
Lord,
Your most obedient and faithful
Servant,
CHAS. J. VAUGHAN.
Harrow,
December
14, 1853.
PRINTED BY
W. NICOL, SHAKSPEARE PRESS, PALL MALL.