the defendant as his ruin was already consummated; but he had a wife and six children who had been virtuously bred and educated, and it was on their account he implored the court not to inflict a punishment on the defendant which would render him infamous.
Serjeant Cockell said it was not his wish to bruise the bended reed, yet it was necessary that an example should be made of the defendant. He was a clergyman and a teacher of youth; and the prosecutors, who had acted from the most laudable motives, had abundant reasons for what they had done. They felt themselves irresistibly called upon to check the practices imputed to the defendant, and which there was too much reason for believing he had indulged in for a considerable time past.
Mr. Justice Grose, in passing sentence, addressed the defendant to the following effect: 'You have been convicted of an assault on a child of very tender years; the narrative of your conduct is horrible to hear, and horrible to reflect upon—the aggravations of your offence, I am sorry to say, are multifarious—the object of your brutality was a child committed to your
