COLONIAL JINGOISM.

Waikato Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 2289, 12 March 1887, Page 2 (Supplement)

COLONIAL JINGOISM.

Was ever a more absurd scheme hatched outside the walls of a lunatic asylum than this plan of catching a thousand schoolboys, tearing them from their lessons and their homes, and despatching them to England, there to assist in celebrating the Queen's Jubilee ! It is difficult to do justice to the exquisite folly of this precious scheme. The mere financial cost of taking the lads to England and bringing them back again as steerage passengers would be about £30,000; and when the thousand youths were landed at Southampton it would need a very large credit indeed to meet all their expenses. It would be desirable to have a photographer in attendance to catch, by the instantaneous process, the expression which Mr Gillies's countenance will wear when he is asked, say, to put the modest sum of £50,000 on the Estimates for such a piece of folly. We are assured by the author of this schoolboy's pilgrimage that all care will be taken of the juveniles. Thirty teachers are to go with them, released—we may be sure—from the trammels of the famous anti-flogging circular. A large supply of nurses, too, is to be sent with the contingent —matrons of a large family experience and decided character. As for the morals of these youths at large, Mr A. Mattingly has announced that "if he was one of those selected for going home, he would have no objection, after the day's work was done, to give the cadets some religious instruction." The country, therefore, may put its mind at ease on this important point. There are a good many simple parents in Victoria, no doubt; but we entirely decline to believe that sufficient will be found consenting to launch their boys on such a fool's errand as this, with all the waste of time and risks to health and character it involves. And certainly the State will not undertake the expense t of despatching these thousand innocents abroad,—Melbourne Telegraph.