MR. ROLLESTON AND EDUCATION.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 6, 7 November 1890, Page 31

MR. ROLLESTON AND EDUCATION.

T«« following letter has been forwarded to us for publication by its writer:— v .* Wjlliam Bolleston, Beg.— Sir,— l have read in the Ohristchurch \Prem of Saturday last, what you had to say on the education question to the electors of Halswell, as well as the tpeechas of Messrs. Lance and Brown on the same subject and reported in the same issue. These gentlemen have not lost all sense of justice and fur play, but express themselves willing to free, to some extent, a considerable section of tbe community from a galling injustice to which they have long been subjected in the matter of education. lam truly sorry that the same cannot be said of you. You appear determined to perpetuate a system which you must know to be in itself unjust. According to your own showing, the average cost of educating each child in the colony is £5 5s 3d. Now there are in the colony twenty thousand children belonging to Roman Catholics, and these children are receiving a secular education quite up to the standard required by law without a single sixpence of coat to the State. Twenty thousand multiplied by five gives one hundred thousand poundf, which mm of money is saved to the State by these p-ople. Gatnohcs are tbe poorest part of our community, and work at the commonest, most useful, and least remunerative kinds of employment. Can you, then, sir, put your baod on your heart and say that these people are fairly treated f Your comparison of the cost of our educational system with that of Australia is singularly unhappy. It amounts to this, that, because the Australian system is ridiculously extravagant, ours must be the same when the colony is groaning under a crushing debt, and an enormous taxa'ion. In stating the cost of education for each child in England, I hardly see bow you can escape the charge of misrepresentation. The Board schools cost the Btate £2 4a 7d capitation ; the Roman Catholic, £1 13s 2d, and the average of the others I find to range from £1 16s to £1 18s. Now, to represent the cost of each child to the State at £3 7s 7£d, leaving oui the fact that nearly half this sum is supplied by school rates is certainly misleading. Again, are you aware of what Sir Henry P»rkes said in reference to the secular system of education when it was introduced into Australia ? " 1 look upon this measure," said he, "as the thin end of a wedge ; once in, the calling of tbe Catholic priest will be gone. He will then have to be packing like Queen Elißabeih's bishops." This, sir, explains the whole affair, and the parties by whom our secular system was in roduced had other and ulterior objects in view than to give the rising generation a secular education. If such is not the case, why does the State refuse to pay Catholic or private schools when they furnish the amount of secular education required by the State 1 If children receive a due amount of secular knowledge, what does it matter to the State whether they receive this knowledge in a private or in a public school f Under these circumstances, then, the Catholic electors m Halswell will not vote for any man who will not make a concession in their favour, as far, at least, as Mr. Vincent Pyke's late measure, known as the " Private Schools' Bill,"— I am, etc., Thomas Milne*, Selwyn street, Addington, October 28, 1890.