The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1883.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3790, 7 September 1883, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 7, 1883.

Me Lkvestam, five member for Nelson, in speaking on the motion for a grant to public libraries, said that long before any other part of the colony had done anything in the way of education the people of Nelson taxed themselves manfully for that purpose. The large endowments which existed in other places, notably in Dunedin, had all been purloined from the Crown. In Nelson, said Mr Loveshun, the endowments had been obtained in a different way. When the settlement was founded tho people there agreed to set aside endowments for education. They agreed to pay double tho price for their land on tho understanding that half should be set asido for that purpose. They obtained their endowments without robbing tho colony. Tho education reserves in Otago do not belong to the people of that province, and tho time will come when the colony will talce them over and administer them for tho benefit of the whole colony in tho interests of education. Mr Lovastam's view of tho position of the enormous reserves not only in Otago but in Canterbury, is largely shared in everywhere except in those two provinces. There tho idea is held that tho reserves are tho private estates of those provinces set apart for particular purposes, which extend no further than the provincial boundaries. To speak of them in any sense as colonial property is regarded as tho languago of a tluef. In the debate on tho Religious and Educational Endowments Bill, Mr Sheehan spoke very plainly on this subject. He said, speaking of the reserves, " the extent of these lands was pretty well known to bo very large ; they-were most _, valuable lands, and even now if resumed by the State would largely assist in carrying on tho established educational system. " Ho believed the time was coming when "it would be proper and even necessary and imperative to make one common property of all the educational reserves throughout tho colony." He noticed, he said, that enormous tracts of land in Otago and Canterbury had passed to the people of thoso two portions of the colony as education reserves. "Abolition was Abolition—one State, one Government, one common fund. That was the outcome of Abolition, if it was to have any outcome at all." But, he continued in effect, because Canterbury and Otago had made Jargo education reservoa at a time long before Abolition was thought of, tho members of the South could not come up and talk Abolition and maintain that, while tho proceeds from these reserves were devoted to giving their children a University education, the people of tho North Island had no right to participate in those reserves, and must be content with secondary education for their children. " The time was fast coming, as ho said before, when the House would vote triumphantly for making all those education reserves common property; when it would vote for putting them into hotch-potch for tho education of all the children in New Zealaud, from the North Capo to Stewart Island." Ho ought at the present time state, he said in conclusion that ho waa prepared to pas 3 a J3ill to resume all educational endowments, and to ensure that they should bo so handled that tho purposes for which they wero given by tho Stato would be fulfilled. "Ho trusted that every member of tho Houso who stood by the system of education now in force, and who desired to see proper administration of theso trusts —for such they were—would assist him in preventing the passage of a Bill which might remove the control of those properties still further from the State."