Suppose that the idea had yesterday been suggested for the first time that
by inflicting physical pain on a child's body you might make him recollect
certain truths; and suppose that instead of whipping, a very moderate and
harmless degree of pricking with pins or cutting with knives or burning
with fire had been suggested. Would not fathers and mothers have cried out
all over the land at the inhumanity of the idea?

Would they not still cry out at the inhumanity of one who, as things are
to-day, should propose the substitution of pricking or cutting or burning
for whipping? But I think it would not be easy to show in what wise small
pricks or cuts are more inhuman than blows; or why lying may not be as
legitimately cured by blisters made with a hot coal as by black and blue
spots made with a ruler. The principle is the same; and if the principle
be right, why not multiply methods?

It seems as if this one suggestion, candidly considered, might be enough
to open all parents' eyes to the enormity of whipping. How many a loving
mother will, without any thought of cruelty, inflict half-a-dozen quick
blows on the little hand of her child, when she could no more take a pin
and make the same number of thrusts into the tender flesh, than she could
bind the baby on a rack. Yet the pin-thrusts would hurt far less, and
would probably make a deeper impression on the child's mind.

Among the more ignorant classes, the frequency and severity of corporal
punishment of children, are appalling. The facts only need to be held up
closely and persistently before the community to be recognized as horrors
of cruelty far greater than some which have been made subjects of
legislation.

It was my misfortune once to be forced to spend several of the hottest