injure themselves, they are
allowed to persist, subject only to dissuasion more or less earnest
according to the danger, there cannot fail to arise an ever-increasing
faith in the parental friendship and guidance. Not only, as before
shown, does the adoption of this course enable fathers and mothers to
avoid the odium which attaches to the infliction of positive punishment;
but, as we here see, it enables them to avoid the odium which attaches
to constant thwartings; and even to turn those incidents that commonly
cause squabbles, into a means of strengthening the mutual good feeling.
Instead of being told in words, which deeds seem to contradict, that
their parents are their best friends, children will learn this truth by
a consistent daily experience; and so learning it, will acquire a degree
of trust and attachment which nothing else can give.

And now, having indicated the more sympathetic relation which must
result from the habitual use of this method, let us return to the
question above put--How is this method to be applied to the graver
offences?

Note, in the first place, that these graver offences are likely to be
both less frequent and less grave under the regime we have described
than under the ordinary regime. The ill-behaviour of many children is
itself a consequence of that chronic irritation in which they are kept
by bad management. The state of isolation and antagonism produced by
frequent punishment, necessarily deadens the sympathies; necessarily,
therefore, opens the way to those transgressions which the sympathies
check. That harsh treatment which children of the same family inflict on
each other, is often, in great measure, a reflex of the harsh treatment
they receive from adults--partly suggested by direct example, and partly
generated by the ill-temper and the tendency to vicarious retaliation,
which follow chastisements and scoldings. It cannot be questioned that
the greater activity of the affections and happier state of feeling,
maintained in children by the discipline we have described, must prevent
them from sinning against each other so gravely and so frequently. The
still more reprehensible offences, as lies and petty thefts, will, by
the same causes, be diminished. Domestic estrangement is a fruitful
source of such transgressions. It is a law of human nature, visible
enough to all who observe, that those who are debarred the higher
gratifications fall back upon the lower; those who have no