The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1880. NO REAL DESIRE FOR RETRENCHMENT.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume VII, Issue 375, 25 June 1880, Page 13

The New Zealand Tablet. Fiat Justitia. FRIDAY, JUNE 25, 1880. NO REAL DESIRE FOR RETRENCHMENT.

S we write, a debate on a want of confidence motion is going on in the House of Representatives. The battle that is now being waged is a fight for the treasury benches. Meantime the money of the people is squandered in an absurd encounter. Everybody knows that the Hall Government has a majority, and that it is consequently a waste of precious time and money to debate the no-confidence motion, Both the Government party and the opposition are highly to blame for their mutual recriminations and want of dignity, for their selfishness, and disregard of the taxpayers' pockets. Parliament, as it is and has lately been conducted, is fast becoming an expensive nuisance. The so-called representatives of the people seem to represent nobody and nothing in the country, except themselves and their own paltry interests. Both sides talk everlastingly of retrenchment, but retrenchment in earnest never comes, and all the talk ends in additional taxation. Instead of retrenchment, extravagance and additional taxation appear to be the only result of the meetings of Parliament, which cost the country about £36,000 a year. But after all, is the Parliament alone to be blamed ? Certainly not, the Parliament is as is the public which elected it, and tolerates it. If the public were in earnest, retrenchment would be soon effected. But too maDy of the wire-pullers, too many who are powerful in the constituencies have a direct interest in maintaining the present abnormal state of things to permit any hope of any real improvement. It is said the civil service and the railway department are overmanned and extravagantly paid, and of course no one can doubt this. But who is to be dismissed, whose salaries are to be lowered ? Certainly not the friends of Ministers and their supporters, and consequently, as a show of impartially must be kept up, no one almost is to be touched by the retrenchment rod. We have said there is no real desire for retrenchment, and we repeat this assertion. It can be easily proved. All the financial difficulties of the country, and the necessity, such as it is, for additional taxation have been brought about by the folly of educating the children of well-to-do people free, at the public expense. This it is that has caused the deficit, this it is which inflicted on us the land tax of last year, the double land tax this year under the name of property tax, and the other new taxes. But not a voice is raised, not a hand lifted in an effort to abate this crying evil either in Parliament or out of it. Everybody except ourselves is evidently afraid even to moot the question, or, at all events, is unwilling to do so. We have had several Royal Commissions during the recess ; but no Royal Commission investigated the Education Department. Yet there is no department of Government in which there is so much extravagant expenditure. First of all, is it not the wildest extravagance to spend out of the public taxes six pounds per head in teaching rudiments to the children of people of independent means. Secondly, what is the meaning of an Education Department in Wellington, and of twelve Boards of Education in the provinces ? Here we find the source of a large uncalled for expenditure. Besides these there are almost innumerable School Committees. The central staff costs a considerable sum ; the twelve School Boards have each a paid secretary ; the members of the Boards travel free on the railways, the School Committees have, we believe, in almost every instance paid secretaries. Then there is the free correspondence for which *he public pays, and the expense of printing twelve annual reports, and the annual report, in addition, of the Minister. Why, if a number of ingenious gentlemen sat down with the express purpose of trying how best to squander the public money, they could not devise a more efficacious system for doing so than our present system of

godless education, which on that very account deserves the additional designation of heartless. In New Zealand there are a few hundred schools and fifty thousand children frequenting them ; and to look after these and devise how to manage to spend £500,000 annually on them, there is no less a staff than a Minister, a central department, twelve Boards of Education, also numerous School Committees, and thirteen secretaries, besides tae secretaries of the committees. Contrast this with what obtains, for example, in Ireland. There, there are more than six thousand primary schools having nearly a million of children attending them ; and how many Boards of Education are there, and how many secretaries ? Listen to the answer. Just one Board, consisting of twenty-four members and one secretary — there used to be two, but it was found unnecessary to have more than one — and a very few clerks, not more, we will venture to say, than are to be found in the central education department in Wellington. Is it any wonder, then, that there should be a financial crisis : that powerful local interests have been created by an insane expenditure of public money? Can any man who knows the circumstances of the case be surprised at the absence of agitation on this subject ? This system of free and godless education which lies as a dead-weight on the energies of New Zealand is in reality a system of bribes to every locality in the country. Fathers of families are freed by it from the pecuniary obligations they owe their children, leading men are provided with free passes on the railways, which enable them to transact their private business at the public expense ; innumerable families have friends and relatives handsomely paid in some way or other, as secretaries, or teachers, or pupil teachers, or exhibitioners, out of the taxes of the public. In fact, every one that can accept godless education is paid by the public for doing so, and consequently becomes at the same time the advocate of this system and the determined enemy ot everyone who opposes it. It is in reality a system of corruption. Is there any difficulty, then, in accounting for the absence of agitation for the reformation of a system which is the one sole cause of the deficit, and the new taxing bills, and that there should be no real desire for retrenchment ?