The Evening Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1887.

Auckland Star, Volume XVIII, Issue 179, 2 August 1887, Page 4

The Evening Star WITH WHICH ARE INCORPORATED The Evening News, Morning News, and Echo

TUESDAY, AUGUST 2, 1887.

For the cause that lacks assistance, For the wrong that needs resistance. For the future in the distance, And the good that we can do.

The imputation cast upon the moral stamina of the girls attending our public schools in a speech delivered by Bishop Neville, at Dunedin, and reported in another column, will, arouse a feeling of indignation from end to end of New Zealand. Mr Jago, chair" man of one of the Dunedin committees, has earned our best thanks for the prompt and effectual manner in which he has met and rebutted the accusationButnothing short of evidence in substantiation of the charge or complete recantation and apology ought to be accepted by the citizens of Dunedin for this wholesale slander upon their daughters. The Bishop's mode of formulating the charge reminds us very much of some of the affidavits in the notorious Langworthy case. He expressly guards himself against making the statement on his own authority, but airily throws it out as one of those things he " has been told you know.". He says that some person in a position which gives his opinion the weight of authority, but whose name he fails to disclose, has told him that the morals of the girls attending our public schools are being corrupted; but he cannot speak on the subject from his own observation. Bishop Neville should be aware however that in the eye of the law the person who repeats a slander is as fully responsible for it as the man who originated it. And in this case the position assumed by the Bishop is certainly very peculiar. Here is a church dignitary having the pastoral charge of a large body of Christians, whose business it surely is to acquaint himself fully with the moral condition of the people whose spiritual concerns are specially entrusted to his care, and he confesses that he has taken and circulated at second-hand a statement of this kind without satisfying himself fully of ': its truth. If this is a sample of the jus : tice and Christian behaviour which the introduction of. the Bible into.,; our schools is expected to produce, long may it be excluded. If Bishop Neville can produce anything in the books or course of instruction adopted in our public schools ; that, will have a morally degrading influence on the character of the boys.and girls attending them, then we will join heart and soul with him and the Bible-in-Schools party in demanding.a change. But so long as we find the ordinary school books pervaded-by moral maxims of the purest kinds, teaching the children that they are responsible to God as well as to man for the preservation of rectitude of conduct and character, we feel but-little interested in a movement which is, to! a large;.extent, a "fad," and which cannot be adopted without making' great, dangerous, and costly changes in our national systemi. .In casting about for some stone to fling at the public schools, Bishop Neville, falls , back ;i ju.pon the specious argument that the State having crushed out all competition, there is nothing left to compare these schools with. But in this he is mistaken.- He forgets that there is, at any rate, one section of the people who have done something more than talk—that the Roman Catholics have put their hands into their own pockets in order to give effect to their conscientious convictions. If Bishop Seville and his party are '.< so ■ very much in earnest on this question let them furnish us with substantial proof of it. Re-establish the parochial schools as the Koman Catholics have done. But they will dq nothing of the sort. The bulk of the Bible-in-Schools party, while demanding that -the Stute shall defray the cost of satisfying their consciences by giving Protestant teaching in the public schools, are the bitterest opponents of

any concession to the conscientious scruples of the Roman Catholics, who have given so much stronger evidence of sincerity in this matter. We repeat emphatically what we have often said before, that the introduction of the Bible into the public schools can only be sanctioned as part of a change in the entire system—from one completely under State controlvto one partly under ecclesiastical control —from secular to denominational. This would very likely meet Bishop Neville's views, but how many of the Bible-in-schools party would jojn hands with him 1

There is no lack of other systems with which the Bishop may compare the one that is doing such good work in New Zealand. We invite him to tell us something about the results in England when the Church had full control of education : Give us a few figures showing how many millions the Church spent annually, and what proportion of the people could read and write j tell us something about the manipulation of rich endowments that ought to have been used for the education of the poor ; .state the statistics of crime and illegitimacy and the other offences against the moral code when the people took what little book knowledge they received just as the Church was pleased to dole it out to them. When Bishop Neville has done this and has compared the information so obtained with the moral standard of the girls attending the public schools in New Zealand, we shall know a little better what weight to place upon this wanton slander which the Bishop has—to use the mildest expression—so thoughtlessly retailed.