And from that day forward Truffey was in universal favour.
Let me once more assert that Mr Malison was not a bad man.

The misfortune was, that his notion of right fell in with his natural fierceness; and that, in aggravation of the too common feeling with which he had commenced his relations with his pupils, namely, that they were not only the natural enemies of the master, but therefore of all law, theology had come in and taught him that they were in their own nature bad--with a badness for which the only set-off he knew or could introduce was blows.

Independently of any remedial quality that might be in them, these blows were an embodiment of justice; for "every sin," as the catechism teaches, "deserveth God's wrath and curse both in this life and that which is to come." The master therefore was only a co-worker with God in every pandy he inflicted on his pupils.
I do not mean that he reasoned thus, but that such-like were the principles he had to act upon.

And I must add that, with all his brutality, he was never guilty of such cruelty as one reads of occasionally as perpetrated by English schoolmasters of the present day.

Nor were the boys ever guilty of such cruelty to their fellows as is not only permitted but excused in the public schools of England.