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Richardson, Samuel, 1689-1761

"Pamela, Volume II"

Against
_him_, he knows he has no remedy, but must passively submit; and when
he is convinced he _must_, he will in time conclude that he _ought_.
But to have this severe office performed by a servant, though at the
father's command, and that professedly, that the aversion of the child
for the pain it suffers should be turned on the person who immediately
inflicts it, is, I humbly think, the _reverse_ of what ought to be
done. And _more_ so, if this servant has any direction of the child's
education; and still much _more_ so, if it be his tutor, though Mr.
Locke says, there is no doubt, if there be a tutor, that it should be
done by him.
For, dear Sir, is there no doubt, that the tutor should lay himself
open to the aversion of the child, whose manners he is to form? Is not
the best method a tutor can take, in order to enforce the lessons he
would inculcate, to try to attract the love and attention of his pupil
by the most winning ways he can possibly think of? And yet is _he_,
this very tutor _out of all doubt_, to be the instrument of doing an
harsh and disgraceful thing, and that in the last resort, when all
other methods are found ineffectual; and that too, because he ought to
incur the child's resentment and aversion, rather than the father? No,
surely, Sir, it is not reasonable it should be so: quite contrary,
in my humble notion, there can be no doubt, but that it should be
_otherwise_.


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