SIR GEORGE BO WEN ON EDUCA

West Coast Times, Issue 908, 20 August 1868, Page 3

SIR GEORGE BO WEN ON EDUCA-

We observe with considerable satisfaction that his Excellency the Governor has brought his large knowledge of educational and philosophic science to bear in his inaugural address delivered at theopening of the New Zealand Institute in Wellington, last week. To that address we direct the attention of our readei s, to whom its perusal will prove valuable, as well by what his Excellency says, as by what he suggests. In this field the Governor proves himself thoroughly at home, and shows that the many yeara of thought which he has devoted to the subject contrast favorably with his necessarily limited experience respecting the nature of the Maori race. It is with a feeling of disappointment that we read the recent despatch of the Governor to tho Duke of Buckingham, in which, by a strange course of argument his i'xcellency compared tho Maoris with the Scottish Highlanders ! making a comparison of a savage people not yet converted from canniba'ism, with a race among whom cannibalism was never known ; who have possessed a civilisation, and with great ardor have professed Christianity, for centuries; whose great fault, led by their aristocratic chieftains, lay in their devoted attachment to the cause of the Stuarts— an attachment, be it remembered, based on tho most unselfish loyalty, and on the cause of legitimacy, and of law and order, as understood by them. History does not forget the massacre of Glencoe ; neither is Culloden forgotten, where the cruelties was on the other side, and which battle-field has pilloried the Duke of Cumberland, who commanded the English army, and handed him down to posterity with the unenviable but deserved cognomen of '* The Butcher." Had Sir George Bowen compared the Maoris with the Pits and Scots at the time of the Roman invasion, there might have been some appearance of similitude, but even then the difference was favorable to the latter, as the monuments of their industry testify. It were useless discussing this subject further ; and we allude to it now because of the gratification which we and many others will experience in reading the address delivered at Wellington ; from which we augur that, after more mature and unbiassed study of the coudition of Maoridom and its relation to the settlers of this Colony, just and more exact opi- j nions will prevail in tho mind of his Excellency. On the question of education, we notice with pleasure, his concluding sentences respecting the necessity of giving larger spaco to technical instruction in our schools, a branch of practical education which is at present too little insisted on. — Nelson " Colonist."