Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 98, 16 March 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, MARCH 16, 1863.

In our issue of the 23rd of February last, we published Mr. Colenso’s report upon the state of those schools that are under his inspection, and which are connected with this Province.

It is certainly a most unfortunate thing for the rising generation in Hawke’s Bay that the school accommodation is so extremely limited. We have reason to believe that a very large number of the children now growing up in this Province are deprived of education, not from any remissness on the part of their parents, or from the want of an earnest desire to obtain instruction for them, but from the uncontrolable circumstance of their being no school to send the children to, neither is there to be found any person in whom confidence can be placed, and from whom the children can receive any

sort of tuition, not even the rudiments thereof. This state of things, which in its effect upon the next generation of Hawke’s Bayites will be felt in a manner most disastrous and disgraceful, is in a great measure to be attributed to the fact of our energies, when directed to public matters at all, being allowed to run riot on party politics and local squabbles, and that they are never, by any chance, in any way whatever brought to bear upon those fundamental principles upon which a sound and healthy state of society finds a secure and lasting foundation. That the education of the people is the first—the very first—subject upon which the attention of our legislature ought to be concentrated is a subject which we apprehend no one will for a moment dispute. And it is an equally indisputable fiict that that nation or that people which has but slightly felt the benign and invigorating influence of education is a nation which will always be found last in the race and onward progress of the great family of mankind. Look at the present state of Ireland ; there we shall find at once a most painful and most appalling example of the effect produced upon a people by the neglect of the intellent while yet in the days of youth that intellect was soft and impressible. It is really heartrending to look at that beautiful country, that “ gem” of the sea as it has from time out of mind been with justice called, and to note the horrible state in which her people are now in. Darkness greater than the outer darkness, as we call it, which pervades the heathen mind covers the people, and they, in consequence, furnish the most remarkable example of agrarian desperation which can be found under the sun. This alarming condition of society we say is to be entirely attributed to the circumstance of those people being carefully brought up in utter ignorance. Turn now from that painful and humiliating picture to the cold and sterile country inhabited by the Scotch people. Notwithstanding that nature lias heaped up as it were mass upon mass of difficulties and discouragements, and would seem to have set her face against the progress of the human race in that part of the world, there will be found the most energetic—the most persevcringly industrious people upon the face of the earth—-a people who came into the world upon one of its most bleak and barren spots, and yet that people are eminently remarkable as much for the quickness and soundness of their mental development as for the undeniable endurance and power of their physical organisation. To what are we to attribute the glorious condition at which this brave and unconquerably persevering people have arrived ? Not surely to the mere fact of their country being bleak and the climate cold and inhospitable, or to the circumstance of their lauds yielding, as the result of unremitting toil, a meagre supply of the necessaries of life. That in a measure has something to do with it certainly, because the fiat which went forth and condemned the whole human race “ to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow” has here fallen upon that section of the human family who find their home within the borders of Scotland with a severity and force which, without regard to the probable justice of the sentence, seems to he more severe than the nature of the crime for which the punishment was inflicted would at first glance warrant. As in some determined manner they have subdued by cultivation the poor state of the lands, so have they subdued # by education, and brought into tolerable subjection, the naturally poor and barren soil of the human mind ; and by consequence they stand forth before all the world as a nation pre-eminent for their learning, wisdom, and integrity. It is not with a view to draw invidious comparisons between any two countries or peoples, nor is it our intention to cast reflections upon those who are unable to better their condition, that we cite the sister

countries we have named, but it is to illustrate the necessity which we know to exist amongst ourselves of a better and more comCtrcf om rvP dnno + i/-**-. A 4- f U vi iu .nap it; I. lucic is no national school-house or schoolmaster. There are several denominational schools, all well conducted and well attended, but a public school, for the education of the youth of the place in a proper and useful manner, without reference to any distinction in religious persuasion, does not exist, and, as far as we can judge from any steps which have been taken for the providing of such a school, there is very little chance of its ever being started.

We therefore sincerely hope that the Provincial Council (which, by the way, need not be alarmed at having too much to do) will bring forward and carry out some scheme by which the object that we have here brought forward may be completely and speedily accomplished.