If, from anger at his fault, one should go above the due proportion, (I am sure I might be trusted for this!) let it take its course!—­How barbarously, methinks, I speak!—­He ought to feel the lash, first, because he deserves it, poor little soul?  Next, because it is proposed to be exemplary.  And, lastly, because it is not intended to be often used:  and the very passion or displeasure one expresses (if it be not enormous) will shew one is in earnest, and create in him a necessary awe, and fear to offend again.  The end of the correction is to shew him the difference between right and wrong.  And as it is proper to take him at his first offer of a full submission and repentance (and not before), and instantly dispassionate one’s self, and shew him the difference by acts of pardon and kindness (which will let him see that one punishes him out of necessity rather than choice), so one would not be afraid to make him smart so sufficiently, that he should not soon forget the severity of the discipline, nor the disgrace of it.  There’s a cruel mamma for you, Mr. B.!  What my practice may be, I cannot tell; but this theory, I presume to think, is right.

As to the act itself, I much approve Mr. Locke’s advice, to do it by pauses, mingling stripes and expostulations together, to shame and terrify the more; and the rather, as the parent, by this slow manner of inflicting the punishment, will less need to be afraid of giving too violent a correction; for those pauses will afford him, as well as the child, opportunities for consideration and reflection.

But as to the person, by whom the discipline should be performed, I humbly conceive, that this excellent author is here also to be objected to.

“If you have a discreet servant,” says he, “capable of it, and has the place of governing your child (for if you have a tutor, there is no doubt), I think it is best the smart should come immediately from another’s hand, though by the parent’s order, who should see it done, whereby the parent’s authority will be preserved, and the child’s aversion for the pain it suffers, rather be turned on the person that immediately inflicts it.  For I would have a father seldom strike a child, but upon very urgent necessity, and as the last remedy.”

’Tis in such an urgent case that we are supposing that it should be done at all.  If there be not a reason strong enough for the father’s whipping the child himself, there cannot be one for his ordering another to do it, and standing by to see it done.  But I humbly think, that if there be a necessity, no one can be so fit as the father himself to do it.  The child cannot dispute his authority to punish, from whom he receives and expects all the good things of his life:  he cannot question his love to him, and after the smart is over, and his obedience secured, must believe that so tender, so indulgent a father could have no other end in whipping him, but his good.  Against him, he knows he has no remedy, but must passively submit; and when he is convinced he must, he will in time conclude that he ought.