New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1877.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXII, Issue 5007, 11 April 1877, Page 2

New Zealand Times. (PUBLISHED DAILY.) WEDNESDAY, APRIL 11, 1877.

Under date of April Bth we had a telegram from Christchurch to the following effect:The Board of Governors of Canterbury College have decided to advertise for a Lady Principal for the girls’ High School, at £450 per year, and a bonus of ss. for each pupil ; also to ask the Government for an endowment of 5000 acres of agricultural land for the school.” Now this telegram bears on its face to us a very ugly look indeed, and suggests reflections which are the reverse of pleasant or composing. When we have on ether occasions commented on similar information coming from the same place, we have been very sharply taken up by the local papers, and have been told rather arrogantly that we knew nothing. Now, on this occasion we “ want to know, you know.” We want to know if this telegram, as it here stands, conveys information correct in substance. Is the institution here called the “ Canterbury College ” the same institution which one of its Board of Governors some time since told us was endowed with a landed estate, at the expense of the colony, which would very soon produce an income of £IO,OOO per annum? If it be not the same establishment, but another, then we ask upon what grounds does this body come to the Government in forma pauperis , asking for the means to found an institution which must in the main be used by the daughters of rich people 1 How is it.that these people, who profess to be so anxious for the “ high ” education of their daughters, cannot combine their resources and establish and manage an institution which shall be self-supporting 1 If, as we shall in the meantime assume, the Canterbury College here mentioned is the same institution which is already endowed out of the colonial estate to such a tune, then the demand about to be made is only to be fitly described as audacious and impudent. “Give, give, give,” says the daughter of the horse-leech; “let there be no slaking of blood-sucking, and no satisfying or surfeiting of gorging and. gormandising—so long as we do it at the cost of other people’s blood, and other people’s substance.” Nothing is more striking than the contrast between this colony and that of Victoria in this matter of the better sort of grammar schools or “ colleges” so called. In Melbourne alone there are some half-dozen or more large and flourishing establishment of this sort for boys, and perhaps quite as many for girls, not one of them receiving a shilling of the public money, or indeed needing or asking for it. Take any New Zealand town and you at once find one such establishment, eking out a rickety and.by no means steady subsistence, spoon-fed with the public money, doing very little good in its own sphere by its direct action, and indirectly doing, infinite harm by the monopoly which it

creates and the blight which it casts upon all healthy private enterprise. This destruction of competition reacts, as it always does, upon the unjustly favored establishment, and instead of the healthy energy and vitality which competition always insures, we have an everlasting, never-ending, still-beginning, whining song of “Give, give, give.” What is the explanation, we again ask, of this striking and unsatisfactory contrast 1 Is it owing to the pampering spirit of provincialism, which never failed to infuse poison into the very carcase which it tried to inflate to portentious and imposing dimensions ? To whatsoever cause owing, the sight presented in this colony by these establishments is by no means creditable to our character for manly self-reliance and self-helpful-ness. We believe it is a fact that the pampering of these High Schools in Otago’has, by destroying all private enterprise in the higher education, and thereby drying up the sources of supply to the University, seriously crippled the usefulness of that institution. It is a great pity that this result was not foreseen some fifteen years ago, when unjust Provincial Ordinances by creating these monopolies blighted private enterprise in that province. Private greed, which was eager in using the public means to establish pauper schools for rich and poor without distinction, blinded the legislative wiseacres to any such considerations as this. We know of one excellent private school doing, by admission, the best work in the province, which was notwithstanding ruined by these unjust laws. The vicious principle was at the time publicly pointed out by the gentleman who had the temerity to devote his time and his talents to such a purpose. But neither on the ground of public expediency nor of simple justice could he obtain a hearing. Now the bitter fruit which was then in the bud is ripened, and they who planted and watered in greed, heedless of others’ rights, must gather and eat in bitterness of spirit. Now, again, we ask, what is this particular “ Canterbury College ” here mentioned 1 On what grounds is this demand, as it appears to us, unreasonable and audacious, to be made 1 Let not our Canterbury contemporaries get angry, and tell us we know nothing about it; that will not serve this turn. We “ want to know, you know,” and we shall take care that before these insatiable persons get what they want the colony shall know too.