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Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume I, Issue 45, 24 September 1887, Page 3

Old colonists who have recently returned from England state that there is no prospect of any inflow of English capital into the colony until there is some change in the Administration of affairs. The names of some of the members of the New Zealand Cabinet, when mentioned in financial circles in London, simply excite a shrug of the shoulder and a cynical smile of contempt, and the prospects of further operations on the London money market are very unpromising. It is said that until the Treasury Benches are empty, swept, and garnished, there is little hope of getting John Bull to unloosen his pursestrings in favour of the coloaial borrower.

Mr Hawkins, addressing the Master ton electors, made the following sensible remarks about education :—*• I tell you that what ever is wrong in this education system will never be changed till you make up your minds yourselves as to what it is you want. Do you wish your sons to be all assistants or clerks in shops and bank offices or in the Civil Service, or are you content that they should follow handicrafts and do farm work ? What is it you aim at iu the education of your daughters 1 A great deal of the present system of instruction is based on the assumption that all handicraft labor is undesirable, and the object of education is to enable the young to escape from it. I oolish people seem to think it fine to sneer at hewers of wood and drawers of water. My own feeling is that handicrafts offer as large possibilities to industry or intelligence as any pursuit, and I would rather see my boy in his shirt sleeves in a workshop, a clever worker in wood or iron, than a masher sitting in a chair in a Government office in Wellington; and I would ten thousand times sooner see my daughter making butter in a country dairy than earning 12s a week in a Melbourne shop and living in Melbourne slums.