THE LORD CHANCELLOR ON FLOGGING.

Poverty Bay Standard, Volume X, Issue 1050, 18 March 1882, Page 4

THE LORD CHANCELLOR ON FLOGGING.

We are glad to find Lord Sei borne in his official capacity giving a check to the ridiculous notion which has recently begun to prevail among the sentimental classes, that it is wrong or harmful to use the birch moderately in the correction of boys of, say, under 12 years of age. We have repeatedly protested against this notion as groundless and absurd. Boxing the ears, striking the hand with a ferrule, shaking children, keeping them without food, shutting them up in dark closets, rousing their angry passions, and then placing them in solitary confinement, not alone, but shut up with the demon of a hideous and malignant consciousness ; and even so seemingly mild a punishment as the imposition of a’heavy or wearying brain task—are injurious and in some instances “dangerous forms of chastisement. Meanwhile, the birch as legitimately applied causes a smart without doing any injury. The Lord Chancellor rightly prefers the infliction of this penalty to the imprisonment of children of tender years. His preference is well founded, and we trust it will have weight with the administrators of justice, and those upon whom the enforcement of domestic .•discipline devolves.—Lanbet.

A diabolical attempt was made on •Dee. 3 to blow up the City Court House at Montreal, Canada, by an infernal machine of clockwork, which contained about ten pounds of dynamite. The matter has been kept very X. quiet, in order to gyve the police a chance to capture the perpetrators. The machine was made of zine and is now in the police station. It is a very . complete piece of machinery.