New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED DAILY SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1876.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 246, 5 August 1876, Page 12

New Zealand Mail. PUBLISHED DAILY SATURDAY, AUGUST 5, 1876.

In his somewhat autocratic proposal of a grant of £SOO to the Roman Catholics for school buildings, Mr. Bunny has done a foolish thing, and has done that thing foolishly. In addition he has been unjust. He may or may not have the absolute letter of the law on his side, but that will none the less make his action unjust. Whilst making these remarks, we confess that we have little sympathy with the motif of the Rev. Mr. Andrew, who has forced himself into the front rank of Mr. Bunny's opponents. Mr. Andrew in this respect does not come into court with clean hands. His intense personal and political dislike to Mr. Bunny is so well known, and has been so little concealed by him, that it would have been better had he let some other front his corepresentative for the Wairarapa in this matter. It would have been better, too, had he contented himself with stating what he knew about the proposed grant, and had not let his imagination so fly away with him as to make him state that about which he could positively know nothing. For instance, we find him reported as saying that upon hearing of the grant he at once addressed a strong viva voce protest to members of the Executive, Messrs. Hunter and Pharazyn. Those gentlemen, he says, did not expressly state that they approved of it; but he gathered from the remarks they made, that they certainly did. It is possible that Mr. Andrew may possess a prescriptive right to stick up members of an Executive at odd times and places and to demand from them official or ex cathedra utterances on any question. He may possess such a right, but we are unaware of its existence. Anyhow, we can well understand the right of a gentleman in an official capacity declining to give an official answer to the Rev. Mr. Andrew at all sorts of odd times and in all kinds of odd places. Mr. Andrew may gather what he likes from viva voce examinations of gentlemen, conducted purely on his innate . powers of assumption, but we deny that he has any right to fix an official approval of a, particular action on a gentleman because that gentleman very properly does not state his express views to every chance intei'locutor. Would it surprise Mr. Andrew if we informed him that Mr. Hunter was not officially a consenting party to the grant of £SOOI It would not surprise us if we heard that Mr. Hunter's first intimation of an intention to grant £SOO to the Roman Catholics was the report in the newspapers.

So far for Mr. Andrew. As for the grant itself, the action of the Board in opposing it is quite right and proper. Their opposition, we take it, is not against a grant of £SOO to Roman Catholics, but is against a particular grant to any particular religious body. For good or for ill (we believe for good) it has been resolved by the Education Board that no denominational aids shall be allowed. The State, through them, professes to supply secular education for those who desire it, and those who want denominational education must provide the same for themselves. Under these circumstances, it is manifestly unfair that any denomination should be aided to the exclusion of others. It is all very well to say that the Roman Catholics have not received any benefits from our State education. That is so because they declined to avail themselves of our system. They have done so on conscientious principles, there is no doubt, but that does not practically alter the position of the State as regards them. The broad principle that guides public education is, that it must bo such as will in no way assist in the promulgation of particular forms of faith ; and, acting upon this, the purely secular system is adopted, and offered freely to all. The Roman Catholics choose to refuse it. Other sects, which would on the whole, perhaps, prefer to teach the ordinary branches of education concurrently with their own tenets, have accepted the national system, and it would be most unjust to them to suddenly make an exception in favor of the Roman Catholics. Indeed, this sudden proposal to grant the latter £SOO, lifts itself above the question of denominational or secular education by the State. Whichever system is right, it is no less certain that the latter is made to rule, and that all other denominations, except the Roman Catholic, have been compelled to take advantage of it. Why then should an exception be made in favor of these latter 1 It is quite true that its members are paying heavily to provide that system of education of which they approve, and refuse that which the State offers them. But they do this of their own choice, and to subsidise them on that account would be simply to admit that the State is wrong in not subsidising Episcopalians, Presbyterians, and Wesleyans, and that these are coerced, whilst the Roman Catholics are not. We are putting this question on the more immediate grounds. There is

no necessity to repeat the arguments so frequently used in these columns, and to show that a secular system is the only one which the State can in justice support, and that on this ground Mr. Bunny is wrong. Setting this matter altogether to one side, his present action is most unjust under existing circumstances, and it is foolish moreover, for whilst £SOO would be but a small fraction to the Roman Catholics, the proposal to grant it will excite a slumbering question, and will withhold much assistance that might have been otherwise afforded to them in the shape of personal subscriptions from those who honestly differed from them in belief, yet admired their conscientious determination. Moreover, as we have said, the thing has been attempted foolishly. The proposal has about it too much of the nature of a surprise —it is too much of a petty coup d'etat. Mr. Bunny had better take care. He has in him much of the autocrat. His off-hand manner at the Board of Education meeting, when he requested that the business might be hurried up in order that he might attend to the cares of State, and at the same time announced his £SOO grant as a matter of course, will not do him good. For his earnest services to the province the people of Wellington owe him much, but his present action may tend to cancel the debt.