The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, AUGUST 26.

Akaroa Mail and Banks Peninsula Advertiser, Volume VI, Issue 534, 26 August 1881, Page 2

The Akaroa Mail. FRIDAY, AUGUST 26.

Under the significant heading " Training our Criminals," the Ashhurton Mail publishes an indignant article on an answer given by the Colonial Secretary to a question having reference to our Industrial Schools. We so thoroughly endorse the remarks of our contemporary that we consider we cannot do better than reproduce them in extenso. The remarks in question are entitled to all the more weight when it is remembered that the Mail, in a general way, supports the present Government. The following is the article to which we refer :—

" That was an extraordinary answer given by tho Colonial Secretary to Mr Pyke the otber day on the subject of the Colony's treatment of neglected children, lie was bound, he said, to admit that neglected and criminal children had been indiscriminately committed to the same industrial school, and he could not see that the matter could be remedied for the present, at all events. We have already on more than one occasion commented on the cool manner in which the Government, whon driven into a corner by some querist as to the remedy for prevalent injustices, coolly answer '• we can't," and appear to think that by this reply th',y have discharged themselves of all responsibility on the matter. It was hardly to be expected, however,' that their effrontery in this respect would have gone to the length that it did in the above answer by the serious Thomas Dick—an answer which we can characterise as nothing less than brutal Putting his words into plain English, we may say that the Colonial Secretary avows his knowledge that many innocent but unfortunate children are being deliberately subjected by the Colony to an apprenticeship in critn Q , and that the Government has e'etermined that it will continue that system. This is State philanthropy with a vengeance. On the system we have often and often commented, and have long hoped in vain for its amelioration ; but such a cold-blooded announcement that the Government of the Colony are determined to continue it at all hazards, that from sheer disinclination to remedy it they will condemn numbers of children to a life of hopeless infamy, and will knowingly provide a future population for ihe Colonial gaols*surpasses the worst that we could have believed of even the present vacillating, popularity-hunting Ministry. It is difficult to write with any moderation of such diabolical indifference to the injury which is thus being inflicted, not merely on the unhappy children themselves, but on the whole Colony to which they are being bred up to become a plague and a perpetual expense. That the electors will yet become alive to the slowly spreading sore which is thus, uuder the guise of humanity and prov : sion for the unfortunate, being ruthlessly encouraged, is now the only hope on this head, and we are fain to confess that that hope is a faint one indeed. While public opinion and public carelessness on these matters remain such as they are, and all attention is concentrated on the immediate building of railways, roads, &c, no sane man can anticipate that the people will bestir themselves manfully on behalf of the future. No one can hope that the public will demand that the State criminal-br.-eding establishments shall instantly cease from the earth, and that the next generation shall not be able to say that, while giving them all the material aids to wealth-getting, we handed down to them also a land polluted by an irretrievably criminal class,. wilfully created at the cost of the taxpayers."