m; but there was, he
admitted, one cowardice of which his two friends had often been guilty,
and it was a cowardice for which they need not blush; he meant the
cowardice, the arrant, the noble cowardice of being afraid _not_ to do
what they thought right, and of being afraid to do what they _knew_ to
be base and wrong."

In these remarks Power quite carried his audience away with him; the
strain was of a higher mood than boys had often heard from boys, and it
was delivered with an eloquence and earnestness that raised a continuous
applause. This, however, Power checked by going on speaking until he
was obliged to stop and take breath; but _then_ it burst out in the most
unmistakable and enthusiastic manner, and entirely drowned the few and
timid counter-demonstrations of the Jones and Mackworth school.

"Now I have detained you too long," said Power, "and I apologise for it
(Go on! go on! shouted the boys); but as so _many_ have spoken on the
other side, and so few on this, perhaps you will excuse me (Yes, yes!)
Well, then, Tracy has asked, `Who are the monitors? and what right have
they to interfere?' I answer, that the monitors are our schoolfellows,
and are simply representatives of the most mature form of public school
opinion. They have all been lower boys; they have all worked their way
up to the foremost place; they are, in short, the oldest, the cleverest,
the strongest, and the wisest among us; And their right depends on an
authority voluntarily delegated to them by the masters, by our parents,
and by ourselves--a right originally founded on justice and common
sense, and venerable by very many years of prestige and of success. At
any rate, a fellow who behaves as Harpour has done, has the _least_
right to complain of this exercise of a higher authority. If he had a
right--and he has no right except brute strength, if that be a right--to
bully, beat, torment, and perhaps injure for life a poor little
inoffensive child, and by doing so to render the name of the school
infamous, I maintain that the monitors, who have the interest of the
school most at heart, who are ranged _ex officio_ on the side of truth,
of justice, and of honour, have infinitely more right to thrash him for
it. Supposing that there were no monitors, what would the state of the
school be? above all, what would be the condition of the younger and
weaker boys? they would be the absolutely defenceless prey of a most
odious tyranny. Let me