Wellington Independent MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1871.

Wellington Independent, Issue 3293, 4 September 1871, Page 2

Wellington Independent MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 4, 1871.

As we expected, Mr Fox made a most able and interesting speech in moving the second reading of the Education Bill. Having explained what led to its introduction, he gave a luminous exposition of its principal provisions. With regard to that bugbear in educational legislation — the religious difficulty — he showed that the Bill provided for a religious, but non-sectarian education, while, under certain conditions, schools conducted on the strictly denominational principle could share in the benefits of the Act. Mr Curtis followed in a very neat and perspicuous speech, indicating in what direction he thought amendments desirable. The burden of his speech may be said to have been this, " We have a system of education in Nelson that works well. Adopt our system in all its details but one (the election of teachers by local committees) and you will provide the best possible system for the whole Colony." Unconsciously, the hon. member seemed to forget that so far as the Province of Nelson was concerned the Bill, on his own showing, was all that could be desired. The very principle of rating, altogether anomalous and indefensible in theory, which obtains in that province, is put in the Bill as an altenative with the juster and more usual principle of a rate upon property. The Premier seems to have thereby intended that no system which has worked well, though its success may be owing rather to local or temporary causes than to its inherent merits, should if possible be disturbed. The late Parliament, as we have seen, by adopting the Richmond resolutions, emphatically affimed this principle. The Superintendent of Nelson forgets that the same line of argument might be adopted by the Superintendent of Canterbury in favor of a principle of rating and other provisions totally dissimilar. He might, in fact, make exactly the same speech, substituting the words " our system in Canterbury " for "our system in Nelson." Soo, too, might the Snpsrintendent of Otngo. One of the many merits of the Bill in our eyes is that it does not for the sake of uniformity disturb existing machinery. Mr Richmond, who agrees with Mr Curtis in thinking the Nelson machinery as good as it is possible to get, evidently did not intend it to be enforced upon other provinces where a different system producing even bettor results obtained. The Act, leaving this question of rating to be determined by the Provincial Boards, takes cave that the character and measure of education in all parts of the colony shall be of a uniform standard from time to time fixed by the minister of education. This is all that is required. To attempt more would be to court failure. The house rate that is so successful in Nelson would infallibly produce a riot in Dunedin. Nay, it is unpopular from the very injustice of its incidence in all the gold fields townships in the province of

Nelson itself, and in many it is not collected at all. There is nothing so obnoxious as a new system of taxing. People •will willingly pay more in aform to which they have been accustomed than in any other. IVbat the colony requires to be secured is that a certain measure of education shall be provided of a certain character, out of local sources, and it is the duty of the Minister of Education to see to it, through the inspectors, that every district, whatever rating system it may adopt, shall come up to this standard of quantity and quality. Mr Ourtis's objections to the compulsory clauses are equally valid against all positive enactments.Children not attending school, and between the age-limits prescribed, ought to have certain certificates of exemption or licenses, but because all may (especially at first) not provide themselves with these licenses, therefore none should be granted. Such seems the gist of his objections— they apply to all systems of licensing. We do not go so far as to recommend the example of the people of Boston, who have established, and with undoubtedly the best effects, a sort of school police, although we emphatically assert the right of the State to insist upon parents discharging their duty to their children. Tho personal rights of the parents must not be pleaded against those rights which belong to every child on being born into the state, and his enjoyment of these the state ought to secure (so long as be is helpless) against parental neglect, excusable or inexcusable. If the means prescribed in the Act prove ineffectual, a more stringent provision will have to be made, but it is better to proceed cautiously in this direction, Under any system but the Nelson system of poll tax there should not bo much fear of its working well. The school treasurer will have no compunction in cases where the parents are able and careless, to call upon them, by seuding their children to school, to pay their share of the local burden, and still. less where they are uuable to pay the fees, as it will be a less hardship for the parents to be compelled to send their children to school, because while they thus receive a free education for their children they escape the poll-tax of the Nelson System. Mr Curtis's objections to the bill arc mainly in regard to those points in which it differs from that system. His speech was one long petit io — whatever suits Nelson must suit the colony. In subsequent debates this fallacy will, we believe, be sufficiently exposed.

The objections of Mr Bathgate to the bill were almost, if not altogether, confined to the aided school clauses. The bill was " an excellent bill," but these clauses were its weakness. We confess we were very much disappointed with his speech. Having hastily assumed that these aided school clauses established denominationalism pure and simple, he proceeded to show the evil effects of that system. The state of England at the present day we referred to in a recent issue. To read of over a million of money being distributed out of poor rates in the City of London was, we said, a sad commentary on one of the " immutable principles" of political economy — " Labor should be left to flow in its own natural channels." Unless the British Government follow soon the example of the Prussian, and, instead of maintaining a yearly increasing army of paupers in large towns, plant them on the soil and transform them into industrious and happy producers, the country will be plunged into an abyss of social anarchy and crime against which all the civilising influences of education and religion will be a vain protection."

Mr. Bathgate traces all the evils that have made English society " rest on a volcano " to clenominationalism ! If the vice of London then arises from religion being taught in too many of its schools, and its misery is the consequence of the educational efforts put forth by religions denominations, it follows clearly that the amelioration of its congested population must depend on banishing the Bible from its list of school books, and dismissing the pious from its roll of teachers ! Mr. Bathgate, who has so ofteu presided at meetings of Bible Societies, and declaimed at denominational soirees, is surely inconsistent in believing that English society can be regenerated without religion, which, according to a far greater social reformer, Mr. Goldwin Smith, "is the deepest thing in humanity." " The fathers of the settlement of Otago," for whom he claims so much gratitude and praise, held, happily, far different views. In the account of " the intentions of the association fur promoting the settlement," signed by the secretaries in Edinburgh, 1847, we read:— "ln the settlement of Otago vigorous measures have been taken to ensure the formation of a well-consti-tuted, religious, and enlightened community. In order to carry out the great principles upon which the colony is being established ..... it is proposed to institute a seminary, in which ample provisiou will be made for teaching every branch of a liberal education. . , . . The whole institu-

tion will be conducted on Christian principles, and the doctrines and the duties of religion will be carefully inculcated." Nor were the »d vantages of a religious education less important in the eyes of those holy fathers for whom he justly claimed the credit of having established tho Universities and Grammar Schools of Scotland before the Reformation. The founders, for instance, of the College of St. Mary in Dumbarton, whose venerable arch has been retained with pious care in the construction of all the Grammar Schools that have successively perpetuated its name, would "turnin theirgraves" if they heard the secular views of their pretended admirer ! Nor was Mr. Bathgate more fortunate in his assertions as to tiro present state and future prospect of education in Otago. He assured the House that there was no discontentment, or, to use the words as taken, down, " every one was satisfied." What a strange commentary on

these words were the petitions presented tho day after by Messrs Macandrew, Brown, and Mervyn, which showed an amount of dissatisfaction both dangerous and wicked to ignore. Mr Bathgate, rather than make the least concession to conscientious dissentients, would unchristianise the present system. He admits that the denominational schools aided under Mr Fox's, bill would "only be found in the large towns," and lest various religious bodies should be assisted by it in their efforts to lessen the '•sins and sorrows" of our cities, he would, forsooih, alter the character of the instruction in all the other schools. Mr Bathgate evidently misapprehends the term "denominational" when be applies it to a bill which enacts that every district board shall provide an unsectarian education for all the children of school age within its bounds up to the standard of quantity and quality fixed by a colonial Minister of Education, and shall give aid to thinly populated localities which cannot be made into a school district, ond to those schools within existing school districts which it has " reasonable cause" to suppose meet some specific want, without marring the usefulness or diminishing the prestige or the income of existing provincial sohools, which are its first and chief care.