A Letter to the Viscount Palmerston, M.P. &c. &c. &c. on the Monitorial System of Harrow School

by C. J. Vaughan

The Monitors may be desired to act as the Master’s deputies; to observe for him, and to report to him. They may be charged to see nothing wrong done, to hear nothing wrong said, without hastening to his presence and invoking his interposition. They may be taught to regard themselves as the Master’s spies, informers, and creatures. Such has been made, sometimes, the theory of their office. They have been solemnly warned of the responsibility attaching to their office, as the Master’s eyes and the Master’s ears. No real power was entrusted to them. The terms of their commission were large, its tone was solemn: but the power to enforce obedience either did not exist, or existed only on sufferance and by stealth.

Now it appears to me that a Monitorial system of this nature is either nugatory, or worse. If the Monitors thus commissioned have the ordinary feelings of the sons of Gentlemen, they will virtually repudiate such an office. They will say, I was not sent here to be an Usher—a Master’s spy, a Master’s informer. They have too much self-respect, too nice a sense of honour, to live amongst their Schoolfellows on terms of unguarded equality, and then use the knowledge thus gained as a means of drawing down upon them the arm of authority and of punishment. The result will be, as it always has been wherever such a view has been taken of Monitorial duty, that the Monitors will not act for the purposes for which they were commissioned, but only for the maintenance of a selfish dignity which looks for its support to other means than those recognized by the system.

It astonishes me that those who regard submission to a corporal punishment as a degradation inconsistent with honour and self-respect, should look with toleration upon that antagonist system under which their sons might be called upon, as the reward of ability and diligence, to assume the office of a delegated spy.

The alternative—as I believe, the only alternative—is that form of Monitorial discipline which it has been my endeavour to carry into vigorous operation at Harrow during the last nine years.

I have taught the Monitors to regard their authority as emanating indeed from mine, and responsible to mine, but yet (with the limitation naturally arising from these two considerations) independent and free in its ordinary exercise. They are charged with the enforcement of an internal discipline, the object of which is the good order, the honourable conduct, the gentlemanlike tone, of the Houses and of the School. In these matters I desire that they should act for themselves; knowing well how doubly, how tenfold, valuable is that discipline which springs from within the body, in comparison with that which is imposed upon it from above. It is only on the discovery of grave and moral offences, such as would be poisonous to the whole society, and such as they may reasonably be expected to regard as discreditable and disgraceful even more than they are illegal, that I expect them to communicate to me officially the faults of which they may take notice. In certain cases, it may be optional whether an offence should be regarded as one against manners or against morals; and in these instances it will depend upon the accident of the prior discovery, whether it be taken up by the Monitors or by myself.

It follows as a matter of necessity that the Monitors should possess some means of exercising and asserting their authority.

Hence arises the old custom of fagging. It is a memento of Monitorial authority; a standing memorial of the subjection of the younger to the elder for higher purposes than any merely personal distinction. It is the daily assertion, in a form which makes it palpable and felt, of a power which has been instituted for the good not of the superior but of the inferior in the relation.

This is the ordinary assertion of Monitorial power. But there must also be some method of punishing disobedience, insubordination, turbulence, or other transgression. To give the Monitors no executive power beyond that of reporting and complaining, would be to leave them practically defenceless. Such a power would possess no influence with a community of Boys. It would be trifled with and trampled upon. Great and long must be the provocation which would overcome the natural repugnance of an honourable Boy to lodging a complaint with a Master against a Schoolfellow: and what would be the redress when it came? Such a remedy would be, in the popular feeling of a Public School, far worse than none.

Shall the power entrusted to the Monitors be that of “setting punishments” (as it is technically called)—that is, of imposing tasks of writing? Such has been the prerogative formally conferred upon the Monitors of Harrow: but it is easy to see how speedily such a right, if widely exercised, would come into collision with ordinary School duties; how impossible it would be for it to coexist with the similar power of the Masters, or even with the performance of the regular work and exercises of the several Forms.

Or shall the right of punishing be made to depend upon the physical power of the individual Monitor? Shall an older and stronger Monitor be at liberty to enforce his authority by blows, while a weaker and younger is left defenceless? Such a rule would be, in effect, an awkward and inconsistent return to a state of things which it is the one object of the Monitorial government to counteract—a system of brute force. Under any constitution of a School, the stronger can protect himself against the aggression of the weaker: it is the object of the Public School system to substitute for the brute force of the stronger the legalized power of the better and the abler. Unless therefore the power entrusted to the Monitor be something different in kind from that of physical strength, the whole system falls to the ground by losing its essential characteristic.