This particular issue was not of course directly raised in the case decided by the LORD CHIEF JUSTICE at Bedford, but it lay indirectly at the back of it. The plaintiff lady’s original objection lay not to corporal punishment as such, but to the corporal punishment of a particular boy or boys who were alleged to be too delicate to sustain it without injury to health. On this point medical evidence was called, but it is reported to have been conflicting. We should conjecture that the original objection might never have been take but for a conviction entertained by the plaintiff, as it is by many a fond mother in these days, that corporal punishment, even in the form of a mild dose of the cane, is a bad thing in itself.

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