THE NEW ZEALAND UNIVERSITY.

Hawke's Bay Times, Volume 16, Issue 814, 18 August 1870, Page 3

THE NEW ZEALAND UNIVERSITY.

Now that the question of a Colonial University is receiving a considerable share of public attention, the following remarks from a Melbourne contemporary will not be altogether inopportune :—A class, we sue, has been established at the Sydney University for the purpose of affording young men an opportunity of obtaining an accurate knowledge of analysis and of assaying. Would not a public class, such as the law class, be a most desirable institution here? Our University is a State institution, and it would serve the State more if it took for its model the practical Oxford—the American Cornell, where the students, like the pupils of Mr Whackford Squeers, not only learn to conjugate the verb "to dig," but proceed to exemplify its meaning. The classic studies to which English, and in a great measure American University teaching is now confined, are graceful accomplishments. They refine the taste, they polish the manners, but then we must remember that the prizes of life are won now by other weapons than Latin quotations. Pitt used to take the House of Commons by storm with a paragraph from Horace, while John Bright smites bis adversary on the forehead with d stone from the Authorised Torsion, or a rough pebble from " The Bigiow Papers." The ancient lore is, we trust, not doomed, as many believe, not even " alter many a summer," to decay and pass away. It has its place; but it is very true Unvt in the every-day world the battle is fought by means of those applied sciences whicn English Universities' uo almost ignore. In Australia, a keen-sighted student, whose knowledge of assay enabled him to detect the presence of minerals on the paternal run, would do more for himself and his country than if he occupied his leisure in rendering Tennyson into Latin verse. The practical • at the University might well bo popularised,

JP&QTJ&CTIGN m WCTOBU, The Australasian, in an article on iks falling off of the revenue of sajs;—"That excellent milch cow, the public revenue, is not yielding anything like so much as was expected from her at the beginning of the year. Mr Francis shows us that the pail is far from full, and his predecessor on the milking stool surveys the diminished supply with blank amazement. Mr Berry expected to receive £1,764,550 during the first six months of 1870, and Mr Francis, less sanguine but still 'hopeful, calculated upon getting £1,666,100 during the same period. Both, of them are grievously out in their reckoning. The total receipts were only £1,444,131, In 1859, wheal our population was only two-thirds of its present number, we raised more money with greater ease. But that was under a tariff which was a model of simplicity, and before we had commenced strangling our commerce under the pretence of protecting native industry. Upon the quarter ending the 30th of June there is a deficiency of £4L,254, three-fourths of which may be traced to a falling off in the customs and excise duties, showing diminished coni sumption on the part of the people. There is also a decrease of £10,426 in the rail* way receipts for the quarter. Although we trust that some of the causes which have led to this unsatisfactory state of things are only temporary, yet we must not lose sight of the fact that for five or six years we have been afflicted with a radically vicious fiscal policy, and that for 12 years previously, during which our population only averaged 467,000, we raised sm average income of over £3,000,000 sterling; while with 750,000 inhabitants, and with the aid of £L17,000 obtained from the sale of Crown lands, we cannot manage in the first half of 1870 to scrape together £1,500,000. Parliamentary government is no doubt a fine thing, but it sends some extraordinary financiers to the surface of public life—men who have never read Adam Smith, and who would cut a sorry figure if subjected to an examination with respect to their know* ledge of the elementary principles of taxation.