may receive a good deal of individual attention from one another in the
shape of outspoken reproach, ruthless ridicule, and violent resistance
to their attempts at aggression; but the parental despots are compelled
by the multitude of their subjects to resort to political rather than
personal rule, and to spread their attempts at moral monster-making over
so many children, that each child has enough freedom, and enough sport
in the prophylactic process of laughing at its elders behind their
backs, to escape with much less damage than the single child. In a large
school the system may be bad; but the personal influence of the head
master has to be exerted, when it is exerted at all, in a public way,
because he has little more power of working on the affections of the
individual scholar in the intimate way that, for example, the mother
of a single child can, than the prime minister has of working on the
affections of any individual voter.




Children as Nuisances

Experienced parents, when children's rights are preached to them, very
naturally ask whether children are to be allowed to do what they like.
The best reply is to ask whether adults are to be allowed to do what
they like. The two cases are the same. The adult who is nasty is not
allowed to do what he likes: neither can the child who likes to be
nasty. There is no difference in principle between the rights of a
child and those of an adult: the difference in their cases is one of
circumstance. An adult is not supposed to be punished except by process
of law; nor, when he is so punished, is the person whom he has injured
allowed to act as judge, jury, and executioner. It is true that