New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) MONDAY JULY 24.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4785, 24 July 1876, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) MONDAY JULY 24.

The summary which we publish in another column of the reports of inspecting officers of native schools, will be perused with interest by all who are able to rightly estimate the advantages of such institutions. From these we gather the cheering information that, in various parts of the colony, many hundred _of Maori children of both sexes are receiving a sound elementary English education, that'a large number of them have made considerable progress in a knowledge of the English' language and literature, that the pupils , are . adopting our national games and pastimes; arid, above all, that the discipline and training of the schools is producing habits' of ' cleanliness and an

improved demeanor,, not only m the scholars themselves, but also in their parents and associates. The salutary influence thus exercised is strikingly illustrated by the anxiety expressed in , very many remote native settlements fo the establishment of more schools, and by the readiness of the_ parents and Mends of the children in subscribing from their limited means considerable sums of money for the building of houses and teachers’ residences, and by the gift of suitable sites. , ~ The native schools are as yet only the germs of what, under judicious management, they are capable of developing into. They are struggling sturdily through a variety of difficulties which time,only can remove, but which may promote their future vigor and utility. What they require is a fostering care and encouragement which shall spur on the teachers and pupils alike to renewed efforts, until the whole of the young of the native race are attracted to these schools, and the prejudice which still lingers in the minds of a few against innovation may be overcome. This was well recognised by his Excellency the Governor during his recent visit to the native districts in company with Sir Donald McLean, when his Excellency manifested such deep interest in the welfare of the native schools as to personally examine the scholars, entering with genuine zest into the difficulties and trials of the situation, and, with that simple grace which sits so naturally on the English scholar and gentleman, establishing perfect sympathy and ease between himself and. his class. This is preeminently the age of education. At no period in the world’s history has the old saw that “ knowledge is power ” been more applicable than now. A modern writer has well said; “ According as this intellectual nutriment is administered it becomes the germ of happiness or misery to the human race;” and another has said that “ignorance is the parent of crime.” The missionary and the coloniser find their _ chief obstacles in a huge barrier of prejudice and mental darkness, which only time and patience can overcome and dissipate. There, is a species of ignorance which is hereditary, which has blended itself with the very temperament of races, and can only be removed by the tedious process of introducing new phases of thought, and by a gradual moral regeneration, just as the physician by patient skill eradicates some obstinate disease of the physical constitution. Mere differences of race or color are not so formidable to the evangelist and the coloniser, as the accumulated prejudices of temperament and habit. The language of a people, their peculiar phases of thought, are the first obstacles that lie in the path of the missionary and the pioneer of colonisation. The Romans in their greatest days of conquest never lost sight of this grand principle. The language and the institutions of Rome followed, if they did not accompany, the triumphant march of her armies. In modern times the observance of this practice has been the main source of that wonderful success which has attended the colonising efforts of the Anglo-Saxon race, it has been the cement in that grand structure which the world’s greatest Empire, on which “ the sun never sets,” has built up and is consolidating. It forms no part of our present purpose to examine how far some departure from this historical lesson has tended to complicate and delay the civilisation of the Maori race inhabiting these islands. It has been frequently said that a great blunder was committed at the outset in adopting the Maori language as the medium of missionary effort, and as the instrument of engrafting upon the natives those institutions which are the growth of centuries, and an intelligent knowledge of which ttmnot be conveyed in the.rude dialect of a people long sunk in barbarism. It has been contended that our language should first have supplanted that of the Maori, and gradually brought the native mind into that communion of thought and sentiment which would have prepared the way for free intercourse, and smoothed the process of fusion. That there is truth in those arguments cannot be gainsaid, but England need go no further than Wales or Ireland for striking examples of the difficulties of carrying this theory into practice. ' The mistake, if such it is, so far as New Zealand is concerned, was committed long ago, and the present administrator of native affairs had to make the best of circumstances as he found them. What concerns us now is the present and the future, for which there is abundant ground of hope. Whatever may have been the errors of our earliest colonising efforts, the work is now characterised by a spirit of patience and enlightenment. It is to the establishment of native schools, which has already been attended with so great advantage, that we maylook forward for the ultimate success of that policy by the aid of which it is hoped the great problem of fusing the two races may be worked out to a successful solution. So far, be it remarked, in almost every instance wherever the civilised European has come into conflict with the barbarian, it has been fatal: to the existence of the latter ; the weak has dwindled away and disappeared before the strong ; and the result has been confessedly humiliating to our boasted enlightenment and Christianity. Bearing, this in mind, the problem which is being worked ont in New Zealand assumes an importance and a magnitude which cannot be measured by any mere considerations; of the numbers involved, or the comparatively insignificant area to which it is confined. It becomes, in fact, an experiment of worldwide interest and application. Should the civilising efforts which are now being made in this country happily be crowned with success, it, may form, an important landmark in the history of modern colonisation. The experiment would succeed under circumstances of peculiar difficulty, and would demonstrate—perhaps for the first time in the history of the world—the fatal fallacy of a deeplyrooted idea that by the operation of some mysterious law of nature the and the barbarian are doomed to die off before the advance of the white and the civilised —an idea which has too often furnished an excuse for deeds of cruelty and oppression, and produced the fulfilment of its own predictions. To indulge in hopes of that nature may to many appear extravagant and Utopian, but greater effects have resulted from smaller causes, and grander problems have been successfully worked out under circumstances of greater, difficulty, iu theatres much smaller than New Zealand. . The true colonist, casting bis memory back to what, has been achieved in less than a generation, can also look., hopefully for-; ward to the perhaps not remote future when the country of his adoption—felicitously termed the “Britain of the South” —may be the focus of a commercial power and civilisation radiating over a vast portion of the Southern hemisphere, and in-' flueheing the destinies of’ nations yet unborn, in regions yet unexplored, by the European traveller. i It is to the education of the native race, to the fruition , of those plans which

arejthe result of long experience and peculiar' skill, not to temporary expedients and crude theories, hastily evolved, amidst political turmoil and party strife, and embodied in technical; Acta of Parliament which the : natives noyor soo, auchcannot understand, that we rnuat look for the complete and final amelioration of the natives, and the growth of. common interests and aspirations.