from
practice.]

REWARDS AND PUNISHMENTS.--It has already been mentioned that corporal
punishments are entirely abolished;[41] and upon the same principle
all such disgrace as 'would destroy self-respect.' 'Expulsion even has
been resorted to, rather than a boy should be submitted to treatment
which might lead himself and his school-fellows to forget that he was
a gentleman.' In this we think the Experimentalist very wise: and
precisely upon this ground it was that Mr. Coleridge in his lectures
at the Royal Institution attacked Mr. Lancaster's system, which
deviated from the Madras system chiefly in the complexity of the
details, and by pressing so cruelly in its punishments upon the
principle of shame. 'Public disgrace' (as the Experimentalist alleges,
p. 83) 'is painful exactly in proportion to the good feeling of the
offender:' and thus the good are more heavily punished than the bad.
Confinement, and certain disabilities, are the severest punishments:
but the former is 'as rare as possible; both because it is attended
with unavoidable disgrace' (but what punishment is wholly free from
this objection?) 'and because, unlike labour, it is pain without any
utility' (p. 183). The ordinary punishments therefore consist in the
forfeiture of rewards, which are certain counters obtained by various
kinds of merit. These are of two classes, _penal_ (so called from
being received as forfeits) and premial, which are obtained by a
higher degree of merit, and have higher powers attached to them.
Premial counters will purchase _holidays_, and will also purchase
_rank_ (which on this system is of great importance). A conflict is
thus created between pleasure and ambition, which generally terminates
in favour of the latter: 'a boy of fourteen, although constantly in
the possession of marks sufficient to obtain a holiday per week, has
bought but three-quarters of a day's relaxation during the whole of
the last year. The same boy purchased his place on the list by a
sacrifice of marks sufficient to have obtained for him twenty-six
half-holidays.' The purchase of rank, the reader must remember, is no
way objectionable--considering the means by which the purchase-money
is obtained. One chief means is by study during the hours of
leisure--_i. e._ by _voluntary labour_: this is treated of (rather out
of its place) in Chap. VII., which ought to be considered as belonging
to the first part of the work, viz. to the exposition of the syste