CRAS.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XVI, Issue 14, 27 July 1888, Page 17

CRAS.

fRAS ! Yes. To-morrow— that is next year — Ministers will consider the education question. Meantime, extravagance in the Department of Education continues. Infants are still to be permitted to fill public schools, and the country is to be compelled to pay a large sum per head for what is, facetiously we suppose, called education. C«n folly further go ? But it is said, if you give up this f*lee pretence, ever so many public schools muet tt

closed ; bo that falsehood, and consequent demoralisation, must be had recourse to in order to maintain the most iniquitously unjust department in the State. Cras I Next year, however, the whole subject is to be considered — so says the Premier. What whole subject? Education, is it, or only the cost of education ? Tho Premier's words leave this doubtful. This year the vote for the maintenance of public schools amounts to £315,525. This does not include the vote for school buildings nor the sum required for secondary and university education. The country is called upon again this year, in these hard times, with greatly increased taxation, to contribute more than half-a-million sterling to give a free and godless education to the children of people who are, for the most part, very well to do. Is it any wonder that people are flying in thousands from a country so wonderfully and fearfully misgoverned ? Cras ! But the consolation offered by Government is that they will consider the question— whether the whole or part of it we are not told— next year. This, however, is poor consolation for those who have to pay the twenty per cent, additional taxation ; very little satisfaction for all the single people in the country, who must pay a greatly enhanced price for everything they wear, in order that the well-to-do shopkeepers of our towns may have a free education for their children, and our merchants and squatters may have cheap secondary and university educ*' ion for theirs 1 With this monstrous system began, the downward tendency of the country ; with it this tendency has continued, and with it is aggravated to-day. The truth, however, appears to be that Ministers are afraid to tackle the question. There are indications that Ministers do not approve of the system they are compelled to administer, and, if they dared, they would amend it off the face of the earth, and substitute a rational system in its place. Cras! But they can do nothing now : the House of Representatives will not allow them. Prom the Legislature as at present constituted there is no hope of improvement. People must wait a little longer. The annual expenditure on schools represents a loan of twelve millions, and there can be no doubt that since its inauguration the debt of the Colony has been increased five millions through its means. Time, however, fights on the side of justice and common sense. A year or two more, and it will be apparent to the blindest that it will be absolutely impossible to maintain this shocking system any longer. The money necessary to maintain it will not be forthcoming. It is evident to every man capable of forming a judgment on the question, that the revenue, notwithstanding the increased taxation, is a declining one, and that it will soon be out of the question to pay for education entirely out of the consolidated revenue. What then? Why, recourse must be had to rates, and this will have the effect of revolutionising the entire system. This is coming, and coming surely and soon. The friends of justice and all men of common sense will, consequently, keep their souls in peace. The great overthrow is fast approaching, and the great iniquity is near its final collapse. By the way, it was very amusing to witness the discomfiture of the Evening Star last week in reference to this question. Everyone knows that our contemporary tMnks the present system of education, if it did not actually coiue down from heaven, was devised in some region not far from this blessed abode. For years this journal has maintained that not an irreverent or amending finger should be laid upon it, and it has lost no opportunity of proclaiming that It is indeed a perfect system. Well, last week a great educational being from Ontario was in this city, and the Star, in the fulness of its zeal for the honour and glory of its godless schools, which exclude ',a large number of those who are, nevertheless, compelled to pay for them, gushingly embraced the opportunity to secure Dr. Grant's blessing, and approbation of the system. Contrary, however, to expectation, instead of a blessing, the interviewer from the Star office met with, we will not say a curse, but with something not very unlike it. The Star has not since engaged in laudation of the glorious privilege of rearing children in ignorance of their creator and final destiny, and of compelling people who bravely bear the expense of the education of their own children to pay for the free education of other people's children. This abstinence, however, may have arisen rather from exhaustion after its long and laborious campaign in the cause, than from the discouraging facts adduced by Dr. Grant. We shall see. No doubt the Star will die hard, and we shall soon hear the despairing accents of the impenitent thief. Cras J To-morrow, perhaps, or the next day, it may pour forth the

jials of its wrath on the Minister who, driven by stress o f tailing revenue, may dare to pull down the edifice built upon tne foundation of impiety and plunder