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Whether we shall presently be discussing a Juvenile Magna Charta
or Declaration of Rights by way of including children in the Constitution is a question on
which I leave others to speculate. But if it could once be established that a child has an
adult's Right of Egress from uncomfortable places and unpleasant company, and there were
children's lawyers to sue pedagogues and others for assault and imprisonment, there would
be an amazing change in the behavior of schoolmasters, the quality of school books, and
the amenities of school life. That Consciousness of Consent which, even in its present
delusive form, has enabled Democracy to oust tyrannical systems in spite of all its
vulgarities and stupidities and rancors and ineptitudes and ignorances, would operate as
powerfully among children as it does now among grown-ups. No doubt the pedagogue would
promptly turn demagogue, and woo his scholars by all the arts of demagogy; but none of
these arts can easily be so dishonorable or mischievous as the art of caning. And, after
all, if larger liberties are attached to the acquisition of knowledge, and the child finds
that it can no more go to the seaside without a knowledge of the multiplication and pence
tables than it can be an astronomer without mathematics, it will learn the multiplication
table, which is more than it always does at present, in spite of all the canings and
keepings in. |
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