The Globe. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1875.

Globe, Volume IV, Issue 419, 15 October 1875, Page 2

The Globe. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 15, 1875.

It is with the greatest satisfaction that we learn that “ The Canterbury Education Board Bill ” has passed its second reading in the House of Eepresentatives with such a large majority. The members of the Provincial Executive of Canterbury, as at present constituted, have been no friends to the cause of education, and one of the greatest blows they inflicted on the cause was the appointment of Mr Knight to the office which he now holds. The late meetings of the ratepayers to elect School Committees in different parts of the province, show the feeling with which the Minister of Education is regarded. The retiring Committees have in most instances something to say, and that something is usually a complaint of the discourtesy or procrastination indulged in by Mr Knight. The correspondence, which has been published, between himself and different Committees, might be taken as a model of how a Minister should not write. Such effusions as have emanated from the office of the Minister of Education would have been treated with contempt if written by any one in his private capacity, but they are infinitely more reprehensible when coming from one who is clothed in authority. Power and place seem to have entirely turned Mr Knight’s head, and he fancies himself at liberty to use language to School Committees which he would not dare to do to any gentleman who might have an argument with him in his private capacity, and which the clerks in his office would resent at once if used towards themselves. It is hard to imagine how any one knowing, the feelings which actuate a gentleman, could have so far forgotten himself as to make the charges with which Mr Knight’s letters teem. The men who he was addressing in some of these letters were his equals in any way, and in many cases his superiors in ability and usefulness to the colony. But nothing seems to have brought out his vanity and ill temper so much as any suggestion, however moderate, from any Committee. Unequal to the work of superintending the general spread of the educational system throughout the province, nothing has pleased him so much as to be able to find fault with some petty morsel of detail work. In this line he has been eminently successful, but whether the results of his fault-finding have tended to make the office he holds looked to as an advanvantage to the province can be judged by reading the reports which have appeared during the last few days. We firmly believe that Mr Webb is correct when he stated that if “ the province “ were polled, fully eleven-twelfths of “ the inhabitants would vote for the “ re-establishment of the Board.” The late Board gave general satisfaction, though of course there were necessarily some complaints ; the present Minister has given general dissatisfaction, though there may be a few who are of opinion that he is a heaven born genius, with a distinct fitness for the role he is at present playing The valiant Sir Cracroft Wilson, C 8., K. 5.1., to whose exertions, as President of the Canterbury Provincial Executive, we owe the boon of the appointment of the present Minister of Education, of course voted against

the Bill, but he could find but two supporters in his line of action, -No one knows better than Sir Cracroft the state of feeling in this province with regard to the educational system, but we presume he felt in honour bound to protest against the sweeping away of an appointment that he and his colleagues created, in opposition to the wish of the Superintendent and the rnajorit}' - of the people in the province. The Superintendent’s protest against the measure carried last session in the Provincial Council will be remembered by every one. It was unavailing at the time, but we have realised the fact that education has suffered since the alteration in the system, and that we had better have been content to let the Board of Education have the control which they enjoyed, than have handed the department over to a Minister, the only distinguishing feature of whose tenure of office has been his utter incapacity.