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Press, Volume XXII, Issue 2704, 8 April 1874, Page 3

TO THE EDITOB OF THE PRKSB. .. §|! |3ib,—As you have inserted in your issue of j the Ist instant, a letter signed "John Matthews," challenging mc to prove anas* 'A. section which, I am not aware of having made relative to the teaehiug in the Kaiapoi schools, I pen these lines for the information p through your columns of the writer, and a ! writer who joined him in signing a letter to a I similar purport which appeared in the " Lyt- - fclton Times " of the same date, under the signature ■ofktW. H. Wake.'' ! I am 1 not answerable for anything which Dr Foster has said for m„ 7 What I am responsible for is a letter which appeared under tbe signature of " Catholicus," ih _c "New ZealandT Tablet "of the 17th January last,whioh I did » v mybest to read at a meeting of no foif election for the Heathcote district, in gutting _ question to my good friend Sir A racrbft Wilson in relation to: the:* facts !;,, >J detailed in tho said letter. The consisting I believe entirely of members of ' religious bodies, whom another good friend Aat mine, the present head of the Provincial Government, designated,as I understood hkd, as sects, Would not allow mc to quote the whole of "my own words from the "Taiblet" newspaper,' and the chairman ruled that I "iliould be'oUt of order in doing so, It happened that the " Press " had not anticipated the occurrence of anything new at the fourth meeting of Heathcote electors, and the pen-: T sive public lost a little bit of sport in the , account of the basting of a bete noir by the;.•> absence of a reporter to the " Press."' I tried j, x to remedy this default of your reporter by j handing a copy of the above cited newSvT paper'to each of. the four candidates in •> the hope that one of them at least ,-, i would make the truth, the whole truth, (and nothing.but the truth, of this matter known at the nomination. Dr Foster alone alluded to it. He ought to have read out the letter in the "Tablet." He preferred j another course, which increased the' mis." ■: understanding. And now, for the satisfac- ~„ tiqa of-Messrs Mathews and Wfkje, or whom-,.,, soever else it may concern, 1 have to say—' L rlst, that it does not concern: those gentle.men; secondly, that, as I have already ex"plained iw a letteriiu your columns, I ; never.. impeached the conduct of any teacher; on the contrary, I argued wLen questioning one of-the candidates at the Avonside meeting, that <under the, Ordinance it woiridbe.tb.e/ '.r dujty of tbe teachers in the schools wben'giv- '"" ing iti.tructiop to the children in the histonr; of)the times of Martin Luther for example, to canvass his character and the doctr|ne% ~- ori errors which distinguished hint and.the r f i rest of the reformers from each other and' 'sfrom the church. For there is nothing in it"" which limi'S tbe Board or requires the Board to limit the teachers to any particular description of facts in history, or which pre-;' scHbes or indicates the existence of or the feasibility of prescribing any standard of triith in., history. The Board, indeed,' _ aria able to say, from having been a member of it, < was at one time, far from considering itself as to'histbfyj riacred and profane, a sort of sacred college of propaganda endowed with the facility of discerning, had the legislature made. its. members the judges of truth and .ertor in __fbrical works. This axioiri,'l may almost call it, of the incompetency of the State from want of means and appliances te-jdeal with history or more generally with education,'was/one of the leading points _welt on ,by the Catholic Ratepayers'.. Committee in their defence against yout l contemporary of the "Lyttelton Times," wnicb defence, for reason best known to itself, that journal refused to insert in its columns. Its editor and proprietors seem to bri ignorant that the intimidation of voters at elections is unlawful. Whether the elegant extracts from the " Lyttelton Times," commented on in the " New Zealand Tablet" of the. 21st March last, can be classed under that head may yet be a question in the Court' A for the trial of election petitions. ' ' <(■ I am not sure, on the other hand, that all the efforts which certain candidates and electors are making in favor of a pet .Ordinance may not turn out to be labor in- vain, when the penetration of) our lawyers shall have discovered that tbe "cobbler has gone beyond,bis," last." Then perhaps the .exes g(*k our provincial- legislators and Pr_vi_ci_..KJf Governments, will open to the fact that empiricism' ist aa dangerous and,wicked! m JfcfpJ art of educating the mind as in the art of healing the body, and that tbe body politic is not a corpus vile to be experimented .on' ; bj, non-qualified practitioners. . »i .* ; Hut I have a word more to say to complete my explanations in respect to tbe unhappy Kaiapoi school; Since the letter of Mr Matthews appeared in the " Press," I have had an opportunity of conferring with my informant, and I find that I was in error in supposing that he had questioned thi*. child himself, All the rest of my letter is r. exact: Further lam not bound to-gof To> ■? what end ? To get a poor urchin a caning >> for telling tales out of school ? or to givrethe! ('. Board a victim wherewith to propitiate the,. anti-proselyting anti-sectarian portion of the public I~ritutoteneatisainicu .'■!''*./, I am, kc, ■''■"-' B. J. _oOghm_n. O