The last movements which were made in reference to corporal punishment are thus stated by President Quincy, in his History of Harvard University.  “In July, 1755, the Overseers voted, that it [the right of boxing] should be ‘taken away.’  The Corporation, however, probably regarded it as too important an instrument of authority to be for ever abandoned, and voted, ’that it should be suspended, as to the execution of it, for one year.’  When this vote came before the Overseers for their sanction, the board hesitated, and appointed a large committee ’to consider and make report what punishments they apprehend proper to be substituted instead of boxing, in case it be thought expedient to repeal or suspend the law which allows or establishes the same.’  From this period the law disappeared, and the practice was discontinued.”—­Vol.  II. p. 134.

The manner in which corporal punishment was formerly inflicted at Yale College is stated by President Woolsey, in his Historical Discourse, delivered at New Haven, August, 1850.  After speaking of the methods of punishing by fines and degradation, he thus proceeds to this topic:  “There was a still more remarkable punishment, as it must strike the men of our times, and which, although for some reason or other no traces of it exist in any of our laws so far as I have discovered, was in accordance with the ‘good old plan,’ pursued probably ever since the origin of universities.  I refer—­’horresco referens’—­to the punishment of boxing or cuffing.  It was applied before the Faculty to the luckless offender by the President, towards whom the culprit, in a standing position, inclined his head, while blows fell in quick succession upon either ear.  No one seems to have been served in this way except Freshmen and commencing ’Sophimores.’[12] I do not find evidence that this usage much survived the first jubilee of the College.  One of the few known instances of it, which is on other accounts remarkable, was as follows.  A student in the first quarter of his Sophomore year, having committed an offence for which he had been boxed when a Freshman, was ordered to be boxed again, and to have the additional penalty of acting as butler’s waiter for one week.  On presenting himself, more academico, for the purpose of having his ears boxed, and while the blow was falling, he dodged and fled from the room and the College.  The beadle was thereupon ordered to try to find him, and to command him to keep himself out of College and out of the yard, and to appear at prayers the next evening, there to receive further orders.  He was then publicly admonished and suspended; but in four days after submitted to the punishment adjudged, which was accordingly inflicted, and upon his public confession his suspension was taken off.  Such public confessions, now unknown, were then exceedingly common.”