Where a mother, for example, would write telling him how she had given her daughter twenty-five strokes, he would always suggest that twenty-one would have sufficed. This was his principle. Never did he recommend an increase in the total of stripes.
Moreover, in mentioning the beating of a daughter, we have arrived at another of his principal ideas: the hatred of injustice, which led him to counsel equal chastisement for the young folk of both sexes. This principle of equality he pursued consistently in all his literary productions. Whether it was followed out in practice by the responsible parents and teachers of England is a point that will never be solved. Wildman, of course, would have admitted at once that the cases where boys merit chastising exceeds those where girls deserve similar medicine.