New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 4903, 8 December 1876, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) FRIDAY, DECEMBER 8.

The Canterbury Press of yesterday, in replying to our article on the transfer of the Provincial Council Library to the Canterbury College, charges us with haste and ignorance in the view we took of this transaction.; Those who fling charges of ignorance at others are very generally found to be essentially guilty of that same ignorance which they impute.. Their own knowledge being of a very shallow and superficial sort, only able to reach to the surface, or but a very little way below thp surface of things, they necessarily measure other people's range of view by their own, and thus complacently place all view* and opinions which go beyond

them in the convenient limbo of “ ignorance” in their sense of the term. This is very convenient no doubt, but it is contemptible alse. - Let us see mow whether our contemporary’s present tirade against ourselves is or is not an instance in point. It will be recollected that for some two years and more, in a variety of articles, this journal has advocated the view that such institutions as the Canterbury College, besides being most unjustly endowed out of the public estate, are quite premature in the present state of the infant society of this colony. We have on several occasions shown that for a very long time indeed such institutions must, as a matter of fact, be available only for the rich; and just so far as they may bo at the present time and for some time to come taken advantage of by any other class, precisely so far they will be mischievous. While these local educational institutions will be exceedingly convenient at their own doors to a rich class, which otherwise would have to send its alumni out of the colony for their training, they will also act prejudicially to another class by seducing its youth, out of a path of industry where they would be prosperous and useful, into a career of pretentious ambition, in which most of them will starve. We are prepared, if challenged, to refer our contemporary to the days and dates whereon we expounded and enforced these views and these opinions, which we still retain, and now again reassert. These are a sort of argument which parsons who possess no more of social science than such empirical smatterings as they pick up in the daily dabblings in social phenomena necessitated by their position as purveyors for the requirements of a periodical Press, find it hard to comprehend. We have always aimed much higher than that, but for that reason wo are the less surprised to hear from our contemporary the constantly repeated, but thoroughly sophistical and dishonest stock argument, “ Canterbury College is not a private institution, but essentially of a public character, open to every class, &o.” How is this an answer to such views as we have been for years arguing, and which, so far as we know, have notyet been grappled with ? “ Open to every class’,” forsooth ! What avails the mockery of telling us so, when no class but the rich can enter without being injured in the process? The class who really will be gainers by it, know perfectly well what they are about ; and we distinctly charge them that they are indifferent, while themselves really reaping a substantial benefit, at the expense of the public estate, whether the classes below them in monetary competency are essentially benefited or injured. Injured these classes most certainly will be ; that is not only inferable on grounds a priori by those who have more than an empirical knowledge of social things ; but (and let it be marked well) this has been proved elsewhere by an experience which we would fain not see enacted in this colony. We reprinted in these columns, not long ago, a most interesting and instructive article on this topic from the Melbourne Argus , and to that we shall be happy, if our contemporary would understand this important subject, to refer him by day and date. It is a species of rejoinder not in unison with our tastes and feelings to bandy back opprobious epithets flung at our own heads ; but really when we find our contemporary falling into fallacies, and using sophistry, which we foresaw and which we had before exposed, he will pardon us if we say that in applying his own very superficial and empirical knowledge of things social as a measure for us, he displays that ignorance which he imputes, and, in the impetuosity of his desire to vindicate his shallow view, he is guilty of that indecent haste of which he is also pleased to accuse us. As to the main question, we reiterate all the opinions we expressed, and. say that both Otago University and Canterbury College are most munificently endowed out of an estate which in truth and right was the property of the colony; that these princely endowments must for long years to come enure almost solely to the benefit of a few rich people, and perhaps also do much injury of an economic sort; that in these transactions of the transfer of the Provincial Libraries these lich corporations display a mean and greedy spirit.