The Evening Star MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1872.

Evening Star, Issue 2994, 23 September 1872, Page 2

The Evening Star MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 1872.

Victoria, like New Zealand, has had the (lucstion of National Education forced upon her, hut, unlike this Colony, it is there a question of reform, not of originating a system. Some twenty years ago two plans were in joint operation —a National and a Denominational System. Dike all the Colonies, Victoria began the business of building up a social system, not exactly at a point in advance of the pirent kingdom, but nearly at the most advanced points at which contending theorists in Britain had arrived. When Victoria severed itself from New South Wales, and a host of England’s most energetic sons were poured into the Colony, they arrived with the conviction that although in the land they had left no public provision was made for educating the young, it was clearly a duty that means should be provided j and in order to meet the prejudices of many worthy but partially instructed men, the Government of the day sought to disarm sectarian bigotry by adopting a plan by which each denomination might have the charge of the children horn of parents within its communion. But the plan did not answer expectation. It was very liberal in spirit, but it tended to illiberally. Instead of being a bond of peace, it proved a bone of contention. The denominations multiplied schools, but they could not afford to pay the best teachers. Those who claimed to bo religious condemned the national system, and extolled the denominational. It is charity to suppose that their only sin was ignorance, not only of what elementary education should bo, but of what religion should render men. Mr Mill pots the matter very clearly thus :

there are other things of the worth <*f which the demand of the market is by no means a test; things of which the utility does not consist in ministering to inclinations, nor in serving the daily uses of life, and the want of which is least felt when the need is greatest. This is peculiarly true of those things which arc chiefly useful as tending to raise the character of human beings. The uncultivated cannot be competent judges of cultivation. Those who most

need to be made wiser and better usually desire it least, and if they desired it, would be incapable of finding the way by their own lights. It will continually happen, on the voluntary system, that, the end not being desired, the means will not he provided at all, or that the persons requiring an improvement having an imperfect or altogether erroneous conception of what they want, the supply called forth will be anything but what is really required. Now, any well-intentioned and civilised Government may think without j resumption that it docs or ought to possess a degree of cultivation above the average of the community which it rules, and that it should, therefore, bo capable of offering better education and better instruction to the people than the greater number of them would spontaneously demand, Education, therefore, is one of those things which it is admissible on principle that a Government should provide for the people. The well-meant efforts of the Government to sooth sectarian asperity by allowing denominations to found their schools having notoriously failed, a reconstruction of the system has become necessary ; and our telegram from Melbourne, published on Saturday, informs us of the principles on which the now measure is to he based. Mr Wilberforce Stephens, who Ims introduced it into the House of Assembly, is one of the ablest barristers in Victoria ; a man of clear head and large heart; one whose moral and religious character is unimpeachable ; one who has himself labored in the Hold of popular education, and who is well able to judge what it ought to be, and what in a few years it must be, to be successful. In the Legislative Assembly, Mr Stephens introduced an Education Bill on the principles of being secular, compulsory, and free. Common education to be imparted free, but all higher branches to be paid for. Every child must compulsorily attend some school ten days in each month. Penalty on the parent for non-compliance : —Five shillings for the first offence, and one pound for each subsequent breach of the Act. On the second reading, the 24th clause will probably meet with some opposition.

Most probably every one of those principles will be stoutly opposed. Many of the clergy of all denominations will object to the secular system, although they have themselves undertaken to administer the antidote as a religious duty. The evil of interference in education by the clergy is that they want the State to pay a deputy for doing that which they alone should consider themselves responsible for. They want to thrust upon a public servant a duty for which no State has a right to pay. It may be—nay, it is—a public duty to sec that children re ceive elementary education, but it is not a public duty to teach religion in schools. The State should know no religion, because it includes persons of all religions, and public duty requires that the sham of religious teaching in public schools should not be allowed, if for no bettor reason than that it is a sham. We are aware in writing thus we shall be condemned by many who in their own estimation are very religious. We respect them for their conscientiousness, but would urge them to reflect well whether the spring of their present convictions is not an utter mistake as to their duty to their neighbors, which wo need not inform them is the only branch of religion that concerns them as citizens. We would point out to them that denominationalism in any form has failed to raise an intelligent population wherever it lias been tried. Had it been powerful for good, men would have been move generally educated than they are. When such a storm of opposition is raised, as will be raised against the adoption of a secular system in New Zealand, v/c would commend to consideration tbo stinging sentence of Macauley in his comments upon the opposition to Hemixg’s lighting of London.

In spite of these eloquent eulogies, the cause of darkness was not left undefended. There were fools in that age who opposed tho introduction of what was called the new light, as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed the introduction of vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as the fools of an age anterior to the dawn of history opposed the introduction of the plough and of alphabetical writing.

"When two-hundred years lienee tlie continuation of the history oi the most moral and intelligent empire the world has yet seen, the empire of Britain, is written, men will smile upon us who live in those days as a generation grasping after truths that lay within our grasp, unperceived by those who assume to guide the people, because in some things they persist in calling light darkness and darkness light. Mirm tells us democratic constitutions do not always develop political freedom : for in some countries the desire of the people is to tyrannise. To this vice of democracy we have too great a tendency. It crops up in our treatment of candidates, public men, and public questions. It has in all time been preeminently an ecclesiastical vice, and nothing but sound education will connteract it. The education question is shelved this session in New Zealand, but it is only postponed ; and the more wisely we use the short time for arriving at a right decision, the better it will bo for the country.