e school parties, these expeditions were discontinued for a time. This
was no great privation, for the year was closing in.

About this time, October 16th, the appointment of new "Praepostors" was
made, to fill up vacancies in the body. In speaking as usual on the
occasion, the Headmaster called attention to the experiment in
self-government which our special circumstances were affording. There
would be little reason for our recording the occasion, were it not that
since that date the monitorial system in public schools has been
canvassed in the Press, on occasion of an untoward incident of recent
notoriety, and has been described by some as the parent of the "grossest
tyranny," ruinous to the future of any school from which the institution
is inseparable. We had thought this view of the system obsolete, or
correct only of schools subject to obsolete conditions. If we were
mistaken, it may be worth while to record an experience which tends to a
less pessimistic conclusion.

It will easily be understood that the mechanical organisation of the
school was greatly deranged by the removal from home. The boys of the
several houses were no longer locally separated, nor in the same
immediate contact with their housemasters; they were restrained by few
bolt-and-bar securities, "lock-up" being for the most part impracticable,
and were allowed a larger liberty in many less definable ways. At the
same time they were exposed to no little discomfort, and during the rainy
months to much monotony, the very conditions which promote bullying and
other mischief. Further, the same causes which reduced the control of
masters, also embarrassed the upper boys in their monitorial duties. Thus
the school was left in a quite unusual degree to its self-government, and
that government had to act at a disadvantage.

Yet the result was that all went well. The boys did not bully one
another, and they gave their masters no sort of trouble. Old rules had
to be relaxed, because they could not be enforced, but no licence came of
it; new rules had to be made, which might seem vexatious and not very
intelligible restrictions, but there was no tendency to break them. Of
course wrong things were done at Borth as elsewhere; but if we were to
record the few misdeeds which occur to us, their insignificance would
provoke a smile; while we have good evidence for the belief that the rate
of undetected offences was not increased.

These are the facts