PERIODICALS.

Otago Witness, Issue 1205, 2 January 1875, Page 11

PERIODICALS.

THE FORTNIGHTLY

Has a very curious paper by a Mr Mason, in which Amerioa, that is the United States, ia treated of as a field for immigration, and the argument maintained that her day is over, her star set probably for ever. It would be impossible in a short notice like this to reproduce the proof the writer has addiiced. He has done, however, for this subject all that could be done by dint of elaborate, indeed, almost too elaborate, tables. We must confess to a feeling of grave distrust as to his conclusions. He does not seem to have made sufficient allowance for the very remarkable way in which a young nation recovers itself by its own inherent vitality. As regards wages we note — First-class farm servants receive, in Canada £49 4s, and in New England £51 18s Bd, $er year. This slight difference is absorber, many { ;jyss; jyss over, by the higher prices of all necessaries of life on this side of the border. The constant smuggling from which our revenues suffer is proof of the greater cheapness of Canadian wares. It ia but a few weeks since a regularly organised comEany for smuggling goods across the order was detected in Chicago, whence I write. Such cases are common. It ia seldom that an American lady returns from a visit to Canada without trying to smuggle articles of wearing apparel through the lines. Our recently negotiated Reciprocity Treaty with Canada is now being objected to by nearly the whole East, on the ground that the Eastern markets will be deluged with her products, to the exclusion of American goods. Mr Curley offers no farther proof in regard to New England. He says: "The four Middle States of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Delaware, have a present population of about 10,000,000, and could absorb in a single year a labouring population of 400,000 without any serious depression of wages." He states the wages of agricultural labourers in this section of the country. The highest are L4sls 4d per year. These are IA 2s 6d in money, below the corresponding rate in Canada. The labour market, especially for agricultural labour, is overstocked. The especial disadvantages of American labour more than counterbalance its especial advantages. English labour is in the main as well off as American labour. Capital is an essential for a successful immigrant to the United States. We are certainly not prepared for the following, although the action of the thankless demagogues in Dunedin might lead us to suppose that they might have tried their little game elsewhere :—: — A few days after this article was planned, Chicago was placarded with posters, beginning in this style :—: — " There are 200,000 working-men out of employment ! " There i» no chance of better times ahead ! '" Ho ! for merry England ! " Ho ! for canny Scotland ! , " Ho ! for patriot Ireland ! 'Tickets to home can be got at half price, &a, &c." Such advertisements attract attention. The price of passage to all English poits has been cut down to the unprecedented rate of 24d015. currency, from Chicago, and 15dols. from New York. Last autumn, out of 60 members of the Chicago Branch of the Anglo-American Amalgamated Carpenters' and Joiners' Union, 20 went home to England. Six have gone since. One of them bad been in this country-for 32 weeks, and had earned just 80dols., say 13^ guineas, in that time. Two other members of the branch are only waiting until they can pay for their passage to go home too. The Professional Training of Teachers ia the title of a very good paper by Mr Jolly, which should be read by all in Otago who desire to further the cause of education. He laments in impassioned, but well-founded, paragraphs the notable fact that the teaching of teachers has been disgracefully neglected in England, saving when the Churches have stepped in with their Normal Schools. # What then has been done for the professional training of our teachers 1 As it profession, nothing. Other professions have had for generations special and elaborate machinery for training their students for practical work in society. Divinity, medicine, and law have had in our Universities their own classes, in which a preparatory training course, under careful superintendence, must be traversed by tbe future clergyman, doctor, and lawyer. For education, what Breparatory training has been provided has been most partial and inadequate, of insufficient status, and quite incommensurate with the needs of the profession. The higher class of teachers have had no training whatever in the science and art of teaching. How then is such training to be provided for our future teachers ? Where is it to be done ? To these questions I think there is, and can be, but one adequate and permanent reply. It must jje done in and by our Universities. No other answer will meet all the requirements ef the case ; no other is worthy of the work to be done. Some, perhaps, of our readers may be inclined to wonder whether it is possible to instruct very well in the art of teaching. To such Mr Jolly gives a very good answer :—: — The prospectus of the lectures of Professor Payne before the College of Preceptors gives also a good idea of more of the subject matter to be traversed in such a course. Three coursns of lectures were delivered, which had "for their respective objects (1) the science or theory of education, in which an attempt was made to build up the science of education on an investigation into the nature of the organism, the physical, intellectual, and moral being, which is to be subjected to the process of formal training, and to do this by tracing to their origin the various agencies which conduce to bodily, mental, and moral growth ; (2) the application of these principles to the practice or art of education, in which the difficulties of application werej considered, and suggestions offered for meet- j ing them ; the ordinary methods of teaching

different subjects were critically examined, and their principles brought to the test of the theory or science of education, &c. ; (3), the general history of education, with detailed accounts of the theories and methods of the most eminent teachers of all ages, in which their conformity or disagreement with the theory of education was carefully examined." The other articles are all good, especially "A Novelty in French Fiction," by Lord Lytton. FBAZER has a paper which will be widely read here, upon Colonial Distinctions, in which the establishment of orders of baronetcies and peerages in the Colonies is strongly recommended. Those who do not think pure Democracy contains all good will read it with interest. Once this question was asked, and at a critical moment in the history of the Colony in which he lived, by one of the ablest of her sons born under the English flag in a far-off clime. " Why," said Mr W. C. Wentworth, in New South Wales (in debate upon the Bill for establishing .the existing Constitution in that Colony), " if titles are open to all at home, should they be denied to the colonists? Why should such an institution as the House of Lords (which is an integral part of the British Constitution) be shut out from us?" A capital argument again is this — The vulgar objection to absenteeism has, no doubt, something in it. It is in some sort an evil that absentees spend abroad the money which they might spend at home. But there is a deeper defect than the one which is based . on the argument of pounds, shillings, and pence. Means and leisure, unprovided with a congenial sphere at home, will make wings to themselves, and flee to the clime where they can command it. The consequence is that from every Colony there is an exodus of that very class whose presence would most conduce to its welfare. The graces and amenities (which foster and include much of the charity of life) can be found abundantly elsewhere, but the Colony is deprived of the institutions around which they cluster. What is more natural — nay, inevitable — than that numbers of those who ought to be amongst the most forward in all works which promote the arts, the literature, the social charms of society in a Colony, should betake themselves to the mother country, where various elements combine to afford them what they seek ? And see what an envious gap you create when you withdraw from a young community a large part of those whose fortunes and leisure invite them, under fair conditions, to take their share in shaping its future ! What do you leave behind ?— Society shorn of all, or nearly all, of those who ought to be its chief ornament. A review of " Supernatural Religion," by Rev. M. M'Ooll, will prepare the minds of those who have not yet seen that work. We cannot speak too highly of it :— In short I do not see how it is possible to survey human life without being forced to the conclusion that the balance is, on the whole, in favour of human misery. Nor ia it any answer to reply that all this is because men disobey the laws of the Creator. For it is not those who disobey who are always punished. The innocent con stantly suffer for the guilty, while the latter go unpunished, and not unfrequently rewarded. And even if this were not so, still the world ia full of "lamentation, and mourning, and woe." How is this consistent with our belief in an " omnipresent God from whose serene reign ot law disorder and anarchy are absolutely excluded," and "who eternally cares for his creatures ?" It seems to me much more consistent with the con elusion which the author charges on Christianity — namely, that "we are the sport of malice or the victimß of fitful caprice." The fact is, Christianity does not create these difficulties : it finds them, and offors an explanation and a remedy. Physical science finds them too, but it has no explanation to offer nor remedy to suggest. The doctrine of Man's Fall and Redemption our author dismisses sompwhat scornfully as " this abortive design of creation, with such impotent efforts to amend it," a design which he considers " totally incompatible with the idea of an infinitely wise and Almighty Being." The following is irrefragable :—: — It is evident that the present order of nature did not always prevail, There was a time when our earth was a revolving mass of incandescent gases, and when no form o* 1 life, under any condition with which we are acquainted, could have existed on it for a moment. Whence, then, came the first germ of life ? Science cannot answer the question, for even the evolution theory is obliged to start from some primodial monad. The first appearance of a life germ on the black crust of the earth is simply inexplicable on the hypothesis of invariable sequence. It is an effect without a cause, it we are not at liberty to seek one outside the operations of such physical laws as we are acquainted with. For Sir W. Thomson's theory of an aerolite shot through space upon our cooling earth and impregnating it with life has received no encouragement from scientific men, and in any case, it could solve nothing ; for how came the life-germ on the aerolite ? If, on the other hand, it be suggested that the origin of life on the earth is due to some unknown force, I make no objection ; but I claim the benefit of the suggestion for the miracles of Christianity. A force which is able to create life is able, ct fortiori, to restore it. In other words, the original introduction of life into the universe is a greater innovation on the uniformity of natural laws than a resurrection from the deid ; and there is nothing unreasonable, but the reverse, in believing that the power which could do the one can find no difficulty in the other. Nor is the fact of a virgin conceiving and bearing a son in itself more inconceivable antecedently than various forms of generation which natural science has revealed to us among the lower forms of life. Alternate generation, fertilisation for several successive generations, hermaphroditism — all these are opposed to the inductions of experience almost up to our own time, Suppose Hume had been told that

there were animals which at pleasure threw off an arm, that this arm forthwith began an independent existence, and by-and-by met a female of the same species which it impregnated, he would have refuted the story at once by his destructive formula against miraoles. It was contrary to experience, and to a complete induction vp to that time. True, it is now capable of such proof as would have satisfied Hume himself. Other papers are indifferent.