Dick was a most unwilling witness, but he produced the notebook in which he had daily jotted down the number of boys caned, and swore to the general accuracy of the figures.
Mr.Wakefield then asked the magistrates if they would like to hear any further witnesses as to the state of things in the schoolroom.

They said that what they had heard was quite sufficient.

He then addressed them on the merits of the case, pointing out that although in this case one of the parties was a master and the other a pupil this in no way removed it in the eye of the law from the category of other assaults.
"In this case," he said, "your worships, the affair has arisen out of a long course of tyranny and provocation on the part of one of the parties, and you will observe that this is the party who first commits the assault, while my client was acting solely in self defense.
"It is he who ought to stand in the witness box; and the complainant in the dock, for he is at once the aggressor and the assailant.

The law admits any man who is assaulted to defend himself, and there is, so far as I am aware, no enactment whatever to be found in the statute book placing boys in a different category to grownup persons.

When your worships have discharged my client, as I have no doubt you will do at once, I shall advise him to apply for a summons for assault against this man Hathorn." The magistrates consulted together for some time, then the squire, who was the senior, said: "We are of opinion that Master Sankey, by aiding this rebellion against his master, has done wrongly, and that he erred grievously in discharging a heavy missile at his master; at the same time we think that the provocation that he received by the tyranny which has been proved to have been exercised by Mr.Hathorn toward the boys under his charge, and especially by their unjust punishment for an offense which the complainant conceived without sufficient warrant, or indeed without any warrant at all, that they had committed, to a great extent justifies and excuses the conduct of Master Sankey.