PROPOSED' MEMORIAL OF THE INHABITANTS OF NELSON.

Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, Volume I, Issue 14, 11 June 1842, Page 55

PROPOSED' MEMORIAL OF THE INHABITANTS OF NELSON.

To the Court op Directors of the New Zealand Company. The purpose of your memorialists is to request the Court of Directors to reconsider the disposal of that part of our plantation fund which it is at present intended to devote to the establishment of a college in this settlement. Your memorialists would remind the Cour thiit, in this community, the same commixture of elements exists as in the society out of which it arose ; the same variety of age, sex, and condition; in short, the same habit of mind, the same state of society, to educate, to correct, and to improve. , Your memorialists would farther remind the Court that, with the exception of the sum of £15,000 to be applied to the establishment of a colonial college, no fund has been set apart for the purpose of promoting education. Fully impressed as your memorialists are with the importance of making suitable provision for the education of those who can afford a sufficient outlay of time and money to enable them to attain to the advantages derivable from what it is usual to call a liberal education, they cannot but believe that great benefit to the settlement must arise if some portion of the fund now to be appropriated solely to the foundation of a college were to be applied to purposes which your memorialists must ever consider of equal importance, namely, to the support of schools for the plainer educationj^hich, being all that the children of the labouring classes can afford, it is the more essential to extend to them in the short time which elapses between their infancy and the period when they are obliged to encounter the cares and labours of manhood. To form the mind in very early youth, to train and discipline the moral and intellectual growth, to adapt methods of instruction to infinite varieties of character, to impart such knowledge to the young as may be most useful at a more advanced age, to bring up persons of either sex, above all, to prepare the mind at the earliest possible period tor the reception of such instruction as would be acquired at a maturer age — these appear to your memorialists very important requirements, which seem naturally to precede the necessity for a learned education. It may be presumed that the object of the Court in appropriating so considerable a fund to the purposes of education could have been no other than to render this colony attractive to a valuable class of settlers, by securing within its limits the advantages of a liberal education for their children. Your memorialists earnestly assure the Court that they will, by all the means within their power, endeavour to further an end of such high public utility. They cannot however, resist the conviction that there exists in this settlement a prior and paramount necessity for a description of education which collegiate institutions are not calculated to impart. In particular it should be remembered that many of your memorialists are working people ; and to them it is of the highest moment to provide such knowledge for their children as the more learned studies cannot possibly supply. For these reasons, and always keeping in view the purpose of the Court in devoting so considerable a sum to the advancement of education in this settlement, your memorialists would earnestly request that some portion of the college fund may be so far diverted from its specific object as to be applied to the formation and support of schools of elementary instruction in the colony of Nelson. (Signed)