PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1880. ASSAULT.

Patea Mail, 23 September 1880, Page 2

PATEA COUNTY MAIL PUBLISHED Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1880. ASSAULT.

The case of assnltmg a schoolmaster has terminated in a heavy fine and a moral lecture. It is to be regretted that there are schoolmasters whose behaviour is not a model of all the copy-book virtues; but there is a good deal of common humanity about teachers, and they do not surpass Job in patience. Parents may also draw a moral lesson from this regrettable case. A master must have authority, and that authority must be backed up with power to punish. If punishment be excessive or injudicious, there ought to bo a means of appeal to the School Committee. If that fail, there is an appeal to the power of public opinion through the press. It was a serious mistake for an enraged parent to knock down and kick a schoolmaster. It is a bad example to children, and is foolish and ineffective as a means of revenge. For what profiteth it a man to spend his rage in hard knocks, and then have to be hauled up to Court and made to pay for the knocks ? It is the assailant who is conquered in that case, and he also spoils the proper grievance he had before, by forcing an improper remedy. Had the parent in this case expressed regret in Court that his outraged feelings had overcome his judgment, and that he regretted having taken the law into his own hands, the Bench would doubtless have inflicted a nominal fine, with a neat little, lecture tacked to it. But when an assailant enters the box and says he gave the master a licking which wasn’t enough, and he now regrets he did not give him more, though satisfied at the time that he had done enough, there is no ground on which to base a lenient judgment. The Court must teach assailants that it is not for them to defy the law by breaking the peace and rejoicing in having done it. That part of the defence vras deplorable, and no one ought to be readier to recognise the error than the defendant in the case. There arc features in the case which call for enquiry by the School Committee.