A FLAW IN OUR FREEDOM.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XIX, Issue 18, 30 January 1891, Page 18

A FLAW IN OUR FREEDOM.

(Thames Advertiser, January 15.) It takes a long time for a nation to arrive at the perfect law of liberty. Even those nations which to-day stand furthest within the arena of that law retain tiaces of barbarism or tyranny in their politics and practices, as a traveller who has toiled torough brake and bramble may cairy burrs and bits of thorn in his clothes long after he has reacned the open plain or the free uplands. England, we think, retains few of these traces now-a-days ; but can as much be said of New Zealand, one of the finest of her daughters I At present the highest national ideal realisable is that of a country where the only obligations placed upon the people are obedience to the laws relating to the maintenance of the peace, of private morals, public decency, and ibe public health, and the duty of publicly and privately abstaining and refraining from everything calculated to interfere with the recognised or re isonable rights of others. This ideal is substantially nchieved in England, but is it so in New Zealand ? Not yet, we fear. Would it be to reason too finely to suggest that evidence of this backwardness is to be found in the rigidity of our public school system — or rather, in the hardness with which that system presses against the rights of our Roman Catholic fellow-colonists ? It may be that s^me people will regard this suggestion as a sign of retrogression or of fibreleßs latituainarianism ; but so far as we can analyse our own motives, it is made solely from a desire to see the colony appioxiinating its political practice more closely to the perfect law of liberty. The Roman Catholics, it seems, cannot avail themselves of our public school system, and they therefore maintain schools of their own at their owu expense, while at the same time they, as citizens, contribute to the cost of the national schools. There is certainly a want of iquity here. Granted that the Catholics, regarded as cituens, only fulfil the obligations of citizens in contributing to the coßt of the national schools, can it be denied that itj bo far as

they independently fit their own children for citizenship, they are entitled to proportionate assistance at the hands of the nation 1 This assistance is not given, and the rijht to it is denied by many ; and while the facts are so, New Zealand is surely a considerable way from prac'ising the perfect law of liberty. A Now, there is really no goxl reason far adhering to this bit of ■^reasonableness, not to say injustice. The country does not teach theology at present, nor would it be commiting itself to do so in coming to a just arrangement with regard to schools in which it is taught more or less directly. These schools would be opened to Government inspection, and all that is asked is — we understand — that, in proportion to the percentage of passes in secular knowled are made by their pupils, they should be subsidised by the State. As we all know or might know, and as Bishop Moran recently pointed out in Dunedio, this is done in England and Scotland and in Canada. In England and Scotland the Catholic schools receive aid ; and — to quote Bishop Moran — " surely that which exists in Canada is possible here, and in Canada there in the most just system of education conceivable. In Canada there are several provinces. There is the province, for example, of Quebec, where 99 out of every 100 people are Catholic?, and the Provincial Government of Quebec does the most absolute justice to the magnificent university, and gives it equal rights. Then if yon go to another province, Ontario, where the majority are Protestant, we find a similar state of things. Tnere the Catholics are in a minority but they are on a footing of perfect equality with their fellow-citizeas in the matter of education. Ontario is similar to New Zealand, though it is larger in population and has a wider territory to look after ; and wherever in Ontario there are 30 children of school age, and the parents of these children wish to have a school for themselves, the law of the land is that the parents of thesa children can elect a school committee fur themselves, and the moment that is done, all the taxes the parents of those children pay are handod over to their own committee ; and not only is that the face, but other people, who think that the Catholics are entitled to extraordinary aid, are entitled to tell the tax collector to give their taxes to the Catholic committee, and very many Protestants do that. Then the central Government of the country makes an annual vote, and the school committee receives &pro rata share of that vote, so that there the schools of the Government have no penny of advantage over the denominational schools." As Bishop Mor&n says, " that is justice and fair play " ; and, really, it is about time the people of New Zealand said so too — through the medium of the colonial Parliament. To change the present system in the way indicated could do no harm to the country to retain it must be exceedingly harmful, because doing so gives a lirge minority of the people came for feeling that they are treated unjustly — treated m a way which, while being prejudical to them, yields nothing to the majority except the satisfaction— if .satisfaction it can be— of knowing that they impjse their will upjn the minoruy. Tis excellent to have a giaot's strength, But tyrannous to U9e it like a giant. New ZeaUnd, we think, might take this sentiment to heart in regard to her treatment of the Boman Catholic schools.