THE PREMIER.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIV, Issue 40, 28 January 1887, Page 15

THE PREMIER.

N Tuesday last, in the Old Knox Church, the Premier met his constituents, uade half a speech or thereabouts to them, and on the strength of this half speech leccived a vote of confidence. The clcctois of Uunedin hast are easily pleased. When the Stout Ministry came into office it undertook to put an end to the depression then

prevailing, and to promote the prosperity of the country by leaps and bounds. After some years of futile efforts on the part of Ministers, the country finds itself in greater depression than ever, anil prosperity apparently as far off as ever. Perhaps no other Ministry could have done

better, perhaps circumstances have been too strong for any of our statesmen. It may be so ; still the fact remains that the promises of Ministers remain unfulfilled, and this proves at least want of foresight and political sagacity on tha part of universal geniuses. Bat has it been really impossible for Ministers and Parliament to have done any better than they have ? Tru°, they could not have prevented the falling-off in the reverue. True, again, they have made great and laudable efforts in the way of retrenchment and economy in every department except one. In this, however, expenditure has increased, and will, so says the Premier, increase yet more in the coming year. There is something so sacred in giving a free education to the children of people well able themselves to pay for it ; something so sacred and politically correct and sublime in giving rich scholarships — scholarships which highlyeducated Oxford and Can: bridge men might ambition — to youths whose spelling even is rather slipshod, that no effort in the direction of economy has been thought necessary in that department. A revision of salaries has not been attempted, a revision of scholarships has not been thought of ; the propriety, the justice, and the policy of making well-to-do people pay for the education of their children have been utterly disregarded. That one department which has been, and is solely and entirely responsible for all our depression, for our loss of credit in the money market, for the stopping of public works, has remained untouched, whilst the greatest economy has been at least attempted in all other departnents. The country has been sacrificed to secularism, whose primary object it is to extirpate Christianity. And men who still call themselves Christians blush not to allow themselves to be manipulated into instruments for their own destruction,nay they even glory in voting confidence in apolitician who has been an egregious failure. Such is the state of the colonial finances that increased taxation is inevitable, and all public works must be stopped, unless, indeed, common sense and common justice will interpose, and bring about a change in our system of education. An expenditure of half a million a year in schools is not only not necessary on the part of Government, but is an intolerable oppression of the community at large. The nations of Europe are already complaining of the expense of public education there, and yet nowhere is the burden so grievous and injurious as here. In other countries money is not borrowed for the purposes of education ; here, however, a vast amount of borrowed money has been expended on schools, and whilst parents are freed from their natural obligations to their children, every individual in the State is oppressed to foster a privileged chss, establish vested interests, put an end to most desirable competition, and lower the standard of real education. Were well-to-do parents called upon to discharge their duties in reference to the education of their children, and reason permitted to guide the education expenditure ; were a rational system established, every child in this country could be well educated at an expenditure of half the sum now wastefully and most injuriously spent on schools. But it is not the education of children that is so much sought as their education iv godlessness. and hence are the waste and extravagance so much complained of.