in the school. 5. Exemplarity: this is connected with the impressiveness of a punishment; all the solemnities accompanying the execution increase this effect. Bentham, however, did not sufficiently consider the evils attending too great publicity, which have led to withdrawing punishments from the gaze of the multitude; it being simply intimated that they have been carried out. 6. Frugality: or making punishments less costly to the state, as when prisoners are employed productively. 7. Subserviency to reformation: by weakening the seductive and strengthening the preserving motives; as in giving habits of labor to the idle. 8. Efficacy in disablement: as in deposition from office. 9. Subserviency to compensation: as by pecuniary inflictions. 10. Popularity. Bentham lays much stress upon the popularity and unpopularity of punishments, whereby the public sympathy may work for or against the law; when a punishment is unpopular, juries are reluctant to convict, and public agitation gets up for remission of sentence. 11. Simplicity of description: under this head Bentham comments upon the obscure and unintelligible descriptions of the old law, as capital felony, prœmunire. 12. Remissibility, in case of mistake.
Punishments must go deeper than words; indeed, the efficacy of blame depends on something else to follow. Bearing in mind what are the evil tendencies to be encountered in school discipline—want of application being the most constant—we may review the different kinds of penalties that have been placed at the disposal of the schoolmaster. The occasional aggravation of disorder and rebelliousness has also to be encountered, but with an eye to the main requisite.
Simple forms of disgrace have been invented, in the shape of shameful positions and humiliating isolation. As appealing to the sense of shame, these are powerful with many, but not with all: their power varies with the view taken of them by the collective body, as well as with individual sensitiveness. They answer for smaller offenses, but not for the greatest; they may do to begin with, but they rapidly lose power by repetition. It is a rule in punishment to try slight penalties at first; with the better natures the mere idea of punishment is enough; severity is entirely unnecessary. It is a coarse and blundering system that knows of nothing but the severe and degrading sorts.
Detention from play, or keeping-in after hours, is very galling to the young; and it ought to suffice for even serious offenses; especially for riotous and unruly tendencies, for which it has all the merits of "characteristicalness." The excess of activity and aggressiveness is met by withholding the ordinary legitimate outlets.
Tasks or impositions are the usual punishment of neglect of lessons, and are also employed for rebelliousness; the pain lies in the intellectual ennui, which is severe to those that have no liking for books in any shape. They also possess the irksomeness of confinement and fatigue-drill. They may be superadded to shame, and the combination is a formidable penalty.
