The Daily Telegraph. SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1890.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 5887, 19 July 1890, Page 2

The Daily Telegraph. SATURDAY, JULY 19, 1890.

Mb A. Saundebs, M.H.R. for Lincoln (Canterbury), has given notice of the following motion :—" That instead of reenacting tho primage duty now leviod on all iniportH, ac proposed in tbe Financial Statement of the Colonial Treasurer, for the purpose of erecting school buildings and lunatic asylums, this House is of opinion that permanent economy of administration would be most effectually secured by putting a tax upon all incomes exceeding £300 per annum." Tho abovo proposal is characteristic of the New Zealand House of Representatives. It will bo seen that it is in opposition to retrenchment, and in favor of increased taxatiou. Thore are some members of our Parliament who are, apparently, unable to realise the fact that the people of this colony are at present taxed to the limit of their power to boar up under their burdens. This taxation is borne, if not cheerfully, at least with patience, and ■with some degree of satisfaction, in the knowledge that the necessities of the colony demand it. It is necessary to maintain the credit of tho country, and while doing so to presorvo, as far as possible, the luxuries the public services supply, to which formoi extravagances have accustomed the people. The roar for retrenchment that went up from the taxpayers from o-'G end of the colony to tho other at the last elections will be as loud and determined when the next Parliament has to be elected. Whoro economies oan bo effected without detriment they must bo insisted upon. Instead of a moribund Parliament turning , its attention to the means of raising more revenue to keep up needless expenditure, it should devote its remaining days in seeing where retrenchment can be iuude in order to lessen taxation. In connection with this subject we suggested the other day that a good £50,000 a. year could be saved out of the vote for education. Wo pointed out that two yi'UTH ago tho same suggestion was made by Mr Fisher when he held the portfolio of Minister for Education. This saving, he said, could be ejected by raising the school aura from five to six years, and by ceasing " tho freo education of pupils who had passed the Fourth Standard. Tho working classes, tho people on whom the burden of tho cost of educating their children would be next to impossible for them to bear, do not as a rule keep their children at school after attaining to tho Fourth Standard, and would not be injured in any way by such v reform. By tho existing system' of scholarships clever j children would still be able to continue their education, and tho primary schools | would be tho stepping stone to tho High Schools and College. But who do we fiud are the fiorcest opponents of this much needed retrenchment ? The teachers, and tho class that has been created by our oducationul system, and who now regard themselves as having a vested interest in the maintenance of extravagance. The Now Zealand Herald very pointedly suys that tho working classes " must see that this inordinate expenditure on education is so pinching everything else that they are gradually being dri en out of the couutry. The fact is that tho system is boing maintained by those who are interested in it. Kvery teacher, every assistant teacher, every pupil teacher, is a member of a Trades Union to prevent any reduction of expenditure on the system. Thi.ro is one teacher to every thirty-two pupils, waking 305S in the colony. Each of these is a centre of influence, and there are many members who would endanger their seats by joining in any endeavor to curtail the cost of the education system." This is no doubt the secret underlying tho indisposition of Parliament to amend in any form or shape the Education Act of 187". It is not the working , classes who hold on to that Act as to tho charter of their liberties, but the teachors who influonco them to maintain it in all its gross extravagances for the benefit of those who live by it. It only remains for the working classes to refusu to be pinched by taxation for tho purpose of maintaining a beyond the limit within which they derive any advantage. They are quite wise enough to eeo that beyond that limit they are only benefiting those who can well afford to pay for the education of their children.