LARRIKINISM AND THE REMEDY.

South Canterbury Times, Issue 2799, 14 March 1882, Page 2

LARRIKINISM AND THE REMEDY.

[To THE EdITOB]. Sir, —Questioning the truth . of the favorite and oft-repeated adage, “Ignorance is the mother of vice,” Agassiz says “ Ignorance is the mother of superstition, but has no relation with vice. . . . Vice may, and often does, flaunt unpalliated by ignorance; igno ranee may, and often does, walk with its humble purity untainted by vice.”

.Vrom an article in the “North American lleview,” written by Mr , Richard Gr and White, I find the following of! icial report of the State Prison, by Jndge Goddard, of Maine, relative to the co ndition of morals in his State, and it al so is very telling in relation to the subject to which we allude. The figures er ctohd over a period of 29 years, that is from ’sl to ’BO, and they show that while the increase of the population during that time has been 14 per cent, the increase in high .crimes has been 379 per cent. And the criminals arc chiefly to bo found taken from the class whom W’o may conclude to have been in at tendanco at the secular schools, that is Native Americans in tl ieir minority or considerably under midd lo age, “ Nearly 18 per cent,” says the Ju« Igo, “wore convicted dnri • • min ority, and more than 04 per ~..a under t.he age of 50.” The average age of committment is only twenty-five. Secularism having banished religion from tho schoolroom and undertaken to roar up good citizens independently of God, and tho result having proved so disastrous, this distinguished American writer goes on to say.— “One very noticeable fact in this connection as shown by tho foregoing report, is that the State which claims tho honor of

being the founder of the New England system of education while she had by far the smallest proportion of illiterate native-born adults of any, even the New England States had at the same time much the largest proportion of ‘ native white criminals,' they having one criminal to eviry 647 nat've white, inhabitants. , California at that time (I 860) came next to her chosen model, having ‘ one native born white ’ criminal to every 697 native whites, while Massachussets had one to every 649. The nearest approach to her was made by the State of Connecticut where there was one native white criminal to every 645 native white inhabitants. _ In view of the these and other similar facts the Boston correspondent of a San Francisco morning paper tolls the world “ that a large number of public school men have come to the conclusion that the public school system of ■ that city is a failure.” And speaking on the same subject, the editor of another leading American review calls the American secular school system “ our anaconda (anaconda is a large snake of the boa family),” and declares that “do judge this system by its apparent fruits, we should have to pronounce it not only a melancholy, but a most disastrous failure, and that it will be idle, to/ look for the cause of the general rowdyismidleness, and viciousness of the rising generation anywhere but in the training which it has been receiving,” and, in the words of Professor Agassiz, “ this precious system of education is the great boon for which, in 1860, the American people were paying to the tune of 64,030,673 dollars, while at the same time they were grinding through this mill of moral death no less than 6,228,060 children.” —I am, &c. M. dk. H. Duval.