Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1863.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume II, Issue 122, 8 June 1863, Page 2

Hawke's Bay Times. NAPIER, MONDAY, JUNE 8, 1863.

It is a very noticeable circumstance, that although the Government of this Province is at present strongly represented and as strongly supported by Scotchmen, and although the Scotch interest is as strong, if not stronger, than any other interest at this moment in Hawke’s Bay, nothing whatever has occurred in the course of the discussions upon one subject or another having reference to our past career, our present pi-ospects, or our future hones which bears upon the education of the rising generation. We have anxiously looked over the files of our respectable contemporary the Herald, hoping to fall in with some suggestions upon this important subject, hut we have up to this date failed in discovering any indication of that organ of our Scotch brethren taking up the matter, or even hinting at it. This is very remarkable, because the Scotch as a nation are proverbially well educated, and as a nation they look upon

the education of the people as the fundamental principle of all national health and prosperity, and that without it nothing lasting, nothing sure, nothing sound caajbe expected to emanate from a people. In short, their national prejudice upon this matter is so strong that it amounts to bigotry. We are not disposed to quarrel with this popular idiosyncracy of character in our Scotch brethren ; far from it ; we regret to see that they have not taken advantage of their position in this Province to and practically demonstrate it here. It is astonishing to find that in these new countries, with such a wide and uninterrupted field of action open, and with the experiences carefully and painfully gathered and accumulated by older nations, upon every branch of the art of Government, before us, we have not yet attempted, while carefully cultivating and maintaing the manners and customs of the country from which we have emigrated, to adopt any of the plans which have found favor and are generally used in those older nations for the education of the children.

There is, as we all know, and as we need hardly remind our Gmlic readers, an excellent system of national education successfully at work at this day in their own country, in consequence of which system it -is hardly possible to find a man, a woman, or even a child of Scotch birth ignorant of the rudimentary branches of learning. In America there is, or was to be found before the war, a very perfect plan in operation for securing at a cheap rate a good, sound, practical education for the people. Again, if we turn to Germany, than which country there is probably not another in the world where greater attention has been paid by the Legislature to this vital point, and it is the just and proud boast of that practical people that it is impossible to find a nativeborn German who is what may be fairly called ignorant. Everybody in that country of deep and solid thinkers must have been at school at some time or other, and everybody’s children must go to school also. If the parents of a child are too poor (which is very rarely the case) to pay for his schooling, the Government will do that for them, but to school the child must go, under penalties to the parents if he does not. The school fee is so extremely small that unless a child be parentless, or unless his natural guardians are in such miserably indigent circumstances as not to be able to pay the weekly pittance at all, none can say that it falls heavily upon them.

What a great blessing these several systems have proved to those nations which have adopted them, is made sufficiently plain by the fact of there being hardly to he found a Scotchman, an American, or a Prussian, who can neither read nor write.

While our Provincial Council, with blind faith in the abilities and powers of their leader, vote with the most astonishing unanimity for everything and anything which he either boldly suggests, or milder hints at, and vote with apparent gusto large sums of money (which exist merely on paper at present, by the way), for impracticable, or perfectly useless purposes, or for the carrying out of some pet job or other, they have never thought it worth their while, nor has their leader ever thought it worth his while, to vote even the smallest conceivable sum, or to attempt to save from the general distribution of the imaginary spoil, the most insignificant sum, in furtherance of any scheme by which the poorer class of our fellow-settlers may he enabled to obtain cheap and good education for their children. If, instead of seeing large sums of money set down on the estimates for building impossible barracks for impossible troops, or seeing considerable sums voted for the re-purchase of lands from the Maories, which lands long ago were fairly and openly sold, without dispute or question; we had seen even a moiety of these sums set aside for purposes of Public education, then we should have rejoiced

with those who rejoice, and have joined heartily in the cry that M’Lean’s Government is something like a Government. We have heard, to our astonishment, a great deal of talk about the “ working man” lately. We have even heard from the Superintendent’s own lips high ecomiums passed upon the working class; but we have not heard amidst all this clang and clatter one word about enabling the working man to place his children, by means of an inexpensive education, on an equal footing with those learned gentlemen, who for private reasons of their own, rather than from public-spirited principle, get up the cry of the “ working man ”!! There is much talk about getting land for the working man, there is also much talk about getting the working man for the land. But out of all that talk there does not appear to come anything more than what generally does come out of much talk, and that is a great expenditure of precious wind. Nothing is even said about appropriating, for the use of the working settler, or for the endowment of schools, or other generally useful or humane purposes some of that fine country which the Natives are letting to all comers. No, not one word has escaped the lips of our sublime representatives tending to shew that the heart of the Government (if it has one, which is doubtful ; but they certainly have plenty of “ cheek,” and that is not at all doubtful,) is really in their work. They are content that much fine-sounding talk should be laid to their score, but have failed (probably purposely failed) in making any arrangement by which that verbosity might become practically productive. We have said frequently, and we say again now, that a grave and heavy responsibility rests at the door of the Provincial Government, for their neglect of the vital principle of which we treat —the education of the people. We fear that it is a matter too plain and simple, and has been rejected or neglected in consequence, and in the place which it ought to occupy is put that glaring, glittering, gilded piece of folly—the New Provincial Loan ! and other equally shortsighted and foolish schemes.