Hawke's Ban Herald. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1877.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XX, Issue 3936, 27 June 1877, Page 2

Hawke's Ban Herald. WEDNESDAY, JUNE 27, 1877.

There is one important matter in regard to which the less wealthy and populous portions of the colony are likely to gain by the consolidation of government effected last session, that is education. The Christchurch Press, we observe, warmly advocates the project of colonialising the educational reserves. It maintains that the time is coming shortly, whether next session or not it may be at present impossible to say, when free elementary education will be established all over the colony ; public opinion in Canterbury, it believes, is now universally in its favor ; and when that time comes, it maintains that it will be a matter of simple impossibility for any reserves for primary education to be applied so as to give them any specially local value. They must inevitably be, to all intents and purposes, colonialised. " With reference to the views of the Otago Press on the subject, it remarks : — " The Otago Daily Times is gradually coming to understand the true state of the case with regard to educational reserves. When we first pointed out that, in the event of education being made a colonial charge, the present reserves wotild cease to be of any specifically local benefit, our contemporary flew into a downright passion. He denounced our suggestion in unmeasured terms. He demanded that any scheme of education should be based on a vigorous regard for the foresight of those parts of the colony which had set apart reserves. Otago and Canterbury must never be deprived of the advantage which they had thus gained over neighbors who had preferred to live from hand to mouth. So iniquitous a proposition as one that would place them all on a level, if ventured on at all, must be met with a prompt and stem rejection. Such were the opinions of the Daily Times a few weeks ago. Since then, however, our contemporary has cooled down. He admits now that what he inveighed against as a violation of solemn pledges must be done as a matter of course ; that is to say, that the income from reserves will be included in the amount appropriated for educational purposes in the provincial district. Reflection, we suppose, has convinced Mm that the Assembly will not consent to starve education in every other part of New Zealand in order that Canterbury and Otago may brag of their superiority, and that it is not our proposal, but this one of his, which ought to be stigmatised as iniquitous." It is very much, indeed, to the credit of our southern neighbors that such truly wise and liberal sentiments should have carried the day among them.