LIP DEEP SYMPATHY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 32, 6 December 1873, Page 11

LIP DEEP SYMPATHY.

(Auckland ' Evening Star.') A VERY pertinent remark is made by a Southern contemporary in discussing the subject of education. We have every day experience of the selfishness of colonists in the matter of supporting education when the individual pocket has to be touched. No matter at what the school fee or the education rate is assessed, or how it is proposed to be levied, the majority of those who are called upon to contribute, immediately enter their protest. They are ready enough to descant upon the virtues of education, to demand from representatives of ererv class their opinions upon it ; to vote for or against the same individual upon tho reply elicited j to wrangle and fight over where this or that school-house shall be established— but once moot the idea that to perpetuate a proper educational system, it will be necessary for them to put their hands in their pockets and contribute towards so important an object, the request is invariably the same — " I pray thee have me excused." They are magnanimity itself when they are enabled to draw upon the State exchequer or provincial landed estates for the establishment, of schools aud Universities. Tbey would in fact prefer to pay 30s indirectly rather than 5s directly. Any excuse they will urge in extenuation of their selfishness ; anything they will do to avoid a direct taxation upon that which at the same time they are willing to admit is a necessity of the age, and a sin to neglect. This is not a healthy state of feeling ; and is justly, although mildly, reprobated by the contemporary we refer to. It asks : — But where are the private endowments ? Most men have done well here — very many from small beginnings have amassed large fortunes. How many of these have shown their gratitude to the province in which they flourished, and their appreciation of education, by founding or endowing, wholly or in part, even one school, or a chair in the University ? There is much fine writing and speaking about education, and no end of boasting of ■what has been done, but whence the merit, and what great praise is due to men who have been so generous to themselves with that which bas cost them nothing, or next to nothing ?