CORRESPONDENCE.

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume XIII, Issue 145, 17 June 1878, Page 2

CORRESPONDENCE.

THE NEW EDUCATION ACT.

To the Editor of the * Evening Mail.' Sir — I kope you will allow me space in your columns to ; ; answer Father Garin'a letter, which; I was pained and surprised to see appear'in'yoiir last Monday's issue. Had he stuck to the true state of the case there would not have been need of me trespassing on your spade; /After informing the iProtestants of his •« twenty-eight years of flourishing existence" he blames the new Education Act for being "fettered and down,!' but "he. omits to tell us what part he and the rest of the Catholics played to make the Act £s it. is. He tells us he is obliged to refuse i the ? grant for fear of. violating his conscience. i ; l c am very ;glad to- that "the" Soman" Catholics have such tender consciences nowadays. . Past history tells us that it. was not so in former years. lie tells ,us in the fourth paragraph that in the new School Board booka the Roman Catholic religion "is reviled, its history falsified, and its ministers misrepresented." lam quite certain that in none of the school books the Christian 'religion is : reviled. As ,'for th«; history of the Roman Catholic church it needs no falsification; the least said the soonest mended. Part of the fifth and whole of the sixth paragraphs are not founded on the truth. They are so preposterous that I am surprised to see the signature of a Christian minister attached to them. Father Garin tells us that the Government .have adopted the most unjust and tyrannical measures, and have framed an Act of Education by which Catholic parents and teachers are excluded from such schools. He further quotes from a Catholic paper that the New Zealand Government, which so unmercifully fleeces its Catholic subjects to promote antiCatholic and Godless education, refuses to give one shilling to help the Catholics to t support tbejr Christian schools. If the

I Catholics, ref use the grant .which -the Ac%\ fallows who is to bjame? . Aa for the i&odless•l education, did not' the Romani^Catholibs kibk' Jup a great dust about .the religious clauses in ; the Bill when it' was before the. House, andjs it not through their/ inter fer^ence that the Act is a Godless. Act? Thej^ point blauk refused to have the Lord's Prayer, the Ten Commandments, and any portion of the Bible read in the public schools, hence the Godless Education. I hope the Protestants will not be carried away by Father Garin's > letter, but examine the newspapers of 'the time that the Hotlse of Kepresenfatives " was in~segsion,as they will there see who were the means of making the Godless Education, Act. I am, &c, Protestant. Nelson, June 14, 1878.