Mr. Wakefield then asked the magistrates if they would like to hear
any further witnesses as to the state of things in the schoolroom.
They said that what they had heard was quite sufficient. He then
addressed them on the merits of the case, pointing out that although
in this case one of the parties was a master and the other a pupil
this in no way removed it in the eye of the law from the category
of other assaults.

"In this case," he said, "your worships, the affair has arisen out
of a long course of tyranny and provocation on the part of one of
the parties, and you will observe that this is the party who first
commits the assault, while my client was acting solely in self
defense.

"It is he who ought to stand in the witness box; and the complainant
in the dock, for he is at once the aggressor and the assailant. The
law admits any man who is assaulted to defend himself, and there
is, so far as I am aware, no enactment whatever to be found in
the statute book placing boys in a different category to grownup
persons. When your worships have discharged my client, as I have
no doubt you will do at once, I shall advise him to apply for a
summons for assault against this man Hathorn."

The magistrates consulted together for some time, then the squire,
who was the senior, said:

"We are of opinion that Master Sankey, by aiding this rebellion
against his master, has done wrongly, and that he erred grievously
in discharging a heavy missile at his master; at the same time we