New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1876. WELLINGTON WISDOM AND LOVE OF EDUCATION!

New Zealand Tablet, Volume III, Issue 152, 31 March 1876, Page 10

New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, MARCH 31, 1876. WELLINGTON WISDOM AND LOVE OF EDUCATION!

You a time, three Catholic schools in the Province of Wellington received some aid— a paltry sum— from the general Education Kate which all, Catholics included, are compelled to pay. Lately, however, the Board of Education of tlie Province withdrew thi= aid, and took upon itself to withhold from Catholics their own money. The pretext was, of course as untrue as unjust, the promotion of education. ' Well, let us see how the gentlemen of this precious Board love aud promote education. A day or two ago a telegram from Wellington announced to the public that no less than one hundred children were sent away from one of the schools there, owing to want of accommodation. Yet in the face of this alarming fact, the Board perseveres in refusing all aid to Catholic schools, and does everything in its power to add between three and four hundred Catholic children to the

hundred already without accommodation. The Board of Education of Wellington is unable to provide school-rooms for the children under its charge, and the only remedy it seems capable of devising is to close, if it can, efficient schools, and increase the number of schoolless children. Unable to do its duty, it not only refuses help from Catholics, but labors hard to render us incapable of helping it. This is an Education Board with a vengeance. This Board loves the education of the people and labors to promote it ! Pshaw ! it rather hates Christianity. Long ago it refused all aid to the excellent schools of the nuns, on the ground of their being religious, now it has withdrawn a paltry sum from* the two* Catholic male schools in Wellington, and does all it can to close them, though it has no schools to which the children frequenting them could be sent, for want of room. Truly we live in a comical age, and in a blindly enlightened country, which is bigoted ly liberal or liberally bigoted, whichever the reader chooses. We do not believe there is any real desire for the education of the people on the part of its loudest advocates amongst the Secularist sect. "\\Te are thoroughly convinced that this cry proceeds from bigotry and hatred of Christianity on the part of some, and on the part of others from a desire of large salaries and comfortable homes. The education of the people is not the end these have in view, it is only a means to their much desired end Were they really zealous for the education of the people for its own sake, they would gladly welcome every honest effort in this direction, and aid it to the best of their ability. But no; this is not what they do. On the contrary their chief effort is diiected against all schools that are Christian, and maintained by Christian denominations, and provided these be crippled or utterly destroyed, they are indifferent as to whether sufficient provision be made or not for even the godless education of children s»nt adrift, on the* closing of denominational schools. What has recently occurred in Wellington proves this, and the same might be said in reference to every part of New Zetland. Were the Catholic schools closed everywhere, there would not be accommodation for Catholic children in Government schools, and yet the School Boards everywhere are doing their best to close all Catholic schools, by refusing them even the least aid from the public funds.

Again we say, education is not the primary object of the patrons of godless schools, but the destruction of Catholicity first, and then Christianity. What have secularists in their private capacity ever done for the spread of education. Where are the schools and colleges founded by them, where are the schools or colleges to the establishment and maintenance of which they have ever contributed ? Echo, answers where 1 But if schools are to be destroyed, if children are to be sent adrift into the streets, as lately in Wellington, Secularists are to be found actively engaged in the work of destruction and aiding by their policy and acts in doing that which must contribute to the spread of ignorance and immorality. Their acts prove that they consider it better that children should be cast headlong into the streets to grovel in ignorance, than that they should receive a good, sound, and moral education under the influence of Catholicity, and Christianity. Out upon such hypocrisy, and shame upon the perpetrators of such barefaced injustice and robbery.