The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News and the Morning News. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1874

Auckland Star, Volume V, Issue 1479, 6 November 1874, Page 2

The Evening Star: WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News and the Morning News.

FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 1874

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It is somewhat interesting to see what others are doing on behalf of education. We have before us the Report of the Minister of Public Instruction in Victoria for the year 1873-74. From this we observe that the total amount expended by the department on education for the year has been £058,732 8s 9d. As the totr-1 population of Victoria is 790,492, this expenditure represents in round numbers l(ss for every man, woman, and child in the colony. The whole of this, with the exception of some £13,000 from miscellaneous sources, as sales of school books, &c, i 3 contributed direct from the revenue. In the province of Auckland the expenditure on supporting the system of education is estimated for this year, in round numbers at £20,000. The population of the province is 07,451. Thisexpenditurerepresentssomething uuder b'x shillings for each man, woman, and chilil in the province. Whatever objections therefore may be urged against the system of the province it cannot be aaid that undue and extravagant value is Eet upon the cause of education. There is ono thine, however, that is to be noted. The total support of education in Victoria is defrayed from the general revenue of the colony, hore, where we are far more heavily taxed, not one farthing is contributed from the general revenue, and the whole burthen of education is in every one of the provinces thrown on the people themselves. It is also noteworthy that in the measure for the education of the colony, introduced by Mr Vogel session before last, not the slightest indication was afforded of any intention of rendering such assistance, and the Bill only gave the power to districts to tax themselves, affording to them merely the privilege of making option between household rate and a variety of other forms of direct taxation. In New South Wales, too, where the educational system is still in a transition and rather chaotic &tate, the general revenue last year contributed the sum of £120,000, while hero, where taxation has reached a sta^e of oppressiveness to which l.he sister colonies ate strangers, education is treated as a subject undeserving of the attention of statesmen, and not worth the expenditure of a fraction of colonial revenue Whether the madly driving on of railway works, or the training of tho youth of the country for usefulness in life is the more important, and the more worthy of the notic c of statesmen, is of coursj a matter of opinion. But when we see the different estimate in which education is held by the rulers of New Zealand, and of the neighbouring colonies, we cannot help thinking that it augurs ill for the future of our colony. That direct taxation of the most severe kind will be the outcome of the present manner of advance of New Zealand is beyond question, but it is to be deplored that circumstances should have necessitated that education of all other^thing3 should have been the corpus vile on which the experiment of direct taxation should have been made. At tho same time the question forces itself on every well-wisher of the country—shall we put our own shoulders to the wheel, or shall we leave the children of the province to grow up in ignorance, until a better spirit animates the rulers of tho country, and until they recognise the duty of devoting hundreds of thousands a3 generously as in Victoria and New South Wales to the cause of education.