sure way of being spoiled.

As soon, therefore, as the lady was out of hearing, he took a chair,
and made the query at the commencement of the chapter, which we shall
now repeat. "Have you no idea of putting the boy to school, Mr Easy?"

Mr Easy crossed his legs, and clasped his hands together over his
knees, as he always did when he was about to commence an argument.
"The great objection that I have to sending a boy to school, Dr
Middleton, is, that I conceive that the discipline enforced is, not
only contrary to the rights of man, but also in opposition to all
sound sense and common judgment. Not content with punishment, which
is in itself erroneous, and an infringement of social justice, they
even degrade the minds of the boys still more by applying punishment
to the most degraded part, adding contumely to tyranny. Of course, it
is intended that a boy who is sent to school should gain by precept
and example; but is he to learn benevolence by the angry look and the
flourish of the vindictive birch,--or forbearance, by the cruelty of
the ushers,--or patience, when the masters over him are out of all
patience, or modesty, when his nether parts are exposed to general
examination? Is he not daily reading a lesson at variance with that
equality which we all possess, but of which we are unjustly deprived?
Why should there be a distinction between the flogger and the floggee?
Are they not both fashioned alike after God's image, endowed with the
same reason, having an equal right to what the world offers, and which
was intended by Providence to be equally distributed? Is it not that
the sacred inheritance of all, which has tyrannously and impiously
been ravished from the many for the benefit of the few, and which
ravishment, from long custom of iniquity and inculcation of false
precepts, has too long been basely submitted to? Is it not the duty of