THE SEDDON NATIONAL MEMORIAL

Evening Post, Volume LXXI, Issue 145, 20 June 1906, Page 4

THE SEDDON NATIONAL MEMORIAL

TO THE EDITOB. Sir, — Up to the present the press has given no definite indication of the manner h) which it is proposed by some national memorial to honour for all time in this colony the name- of Mr. Seddon. If your columns are open to discussion of the subject I would ask for space iv •which to make a suggestion and a few remarks. It is too often the case that public memorials take a form which in no way has regard to the characteristic of the illustrious dead, whose example and qualities it purports to perpetuate; which is of no practical utility to the community the deceased spent his life in serving ; and which the great majority of the people soon comes to- look upon without enthusiasm, and with a sense of pub> lio money more or less misapplied. In honoured our late Premier it is to be hoped we shall be wise enough to avoid reproach on any of these counts. With this end in view, my humble suggestion of a suitable national memorial is as follows : — The erection here in the centre of the colony of a "Seddon College," in irhich the education given should be of a similar standard to that imparted at the Wellington, Nelson, and Wanganui Colleges. Admission to the college to be by scholarships, open to all the primary State schools of the colony, for girls and boys who have passed the sixth standard. Tha scholarships to be distributed throughout the colony, according to the total number determined on, pro rata of population in the various educational districts. Such scholarships to include free board and lodging, and to be tenable for two or three years, as considered , necessary to enable the scholar to pass out of the college by an examination which fhall he recognised as> equivalent to matriculation, thus taking the scholar, free, right up to the university course. After 'the first two or three years, the entrance examinations would be annual, and thus, from thence on there would be always an appreciable number, say from fifty to one hundred, or perhaps more, of the most brilliant of the girls and boys from -the primary State schools receiving free the highest form of secondary education possible, to the ultimate most certain advantage of the State, the ■universities, and themselves. Such, in the rough, is my suggestion; details at tHis stage are not necessary. I submit that some such national memorial would be. typical of the main characteristics of the deceased, his desire to uplift the people, his zeal in the cause of national education, and the strength of character shewn throughout a remarkable career in »o way more forcibly than by his own educational advance as position and responsibility demanded it of him. — I am, etc., HERBERT B. BRIDGE. 18th Jane.