To the Editor.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 8, 21 February 1907, Page 12

To the Editor.

Sir, — The discussion on the suggested forward movement going on in your columns strikes our friends •Tuba' and Mr. Buckley very strangely. I presume they are both unencumbered with families, otherwise, I vemture to say, the question would affect them very differently. It is a very easy matter to be liberal with the other- fellow's money. It is also much easier to glibly advocate self-sacrifice than to practise it. For our friends' information I have worked out a short estimate,, from my personal experience, to show to what tune each individual, circumstanced- as I .am, suffers under our present system of education. • The statutory capitation grant paid by Governmentfor each child . to Education Boards is £3 15s perhe&d per annum. The total amount paid last- year to Boards was £480,000. It is safe to say that primary education costs this Colony half a million annually. Our population is somewhere about 850,000, and according to these figures every person in the Oolony pays about 11s 9d per annum towards our State education. If you calculate on a family of seven children you will- find that the parents vay annually towards Ihe estate system £5 5s 9d. 1 ,et us say this sum must be paid by the parents for sixteen years, while they are rearing each member of that family. The poor Catholic workman, in the circumstances mentioned, pays £84 12s towards the State

system of education. He pays more, because when'his family have been - reared and have gone to do \iov . "themselves "he and - his - wife must go „on paying untiltheir death. But this is only one side of the man's payments towards education. He has to contribute towards the suppor.t 6L the Catholic schools. Working on the same capitation, grant, and supposing - ;each child to be kept at a Catholic school for say seven years, the education of the family .will cost £183 15s, so that during the school years/of their- family the. parents have to pay in all for primary education the sum of £268 7s. This sum is a heavy handicap on the poor Catholic working-man, imposed upon him during his most struggling years, when he is bringing up his children and trying "to make a Tiome. • -' ..Does it not appear like mockery on the part "of" persons contributing little or nothing towards - this bur- ■ den "to pat me on" the back and- call ""me a ' hero ' and a ' martyr, 1 and exhort me to go' on with my acts of self-sacrifice, give no trouble to secularists, but allow them to trample me down ■ as they - advance ? This is cowardice and baseness of the worst description. Mr. Buckley claims that unider_ the pre- - sent system we are independent, and that seeking State aid is looking for trouble. ' He instances France. But Mr. Buckley is- singularly ignorant of the statje of things in France. The J?,renoh' Catholic schools were not receiving State aui.' Yet the Government has' 'm-ade an effort to- utterly \destroy them, although the French Catholics haw bteen- for the past thirty-five years doing exactly what Mr. Buckley wants^-us to do — they haje tieen keeping 'quiet and saying, nothing,' with the sad results that have nrdw^overtaken them." As soon as the trumpet-call- issues- from the leaders of agnostic coteries who will, unless- Christians' manfully combine against them, control our politics more and more as the years go by, the" Legislature will interfere wijfti Christian schools be they state-aided or : not. All this is what' has just happened in^, France. Yet Mr. Buckley wants us to- keep quiet, say no--"tiling, cross our hands, , bow our heads,- await the 'in--evita'ble, and allow secularists, agnostics, and infidels to trample us down as they advance in numbers and resources. This is as I said above' - cowardice ■ and.baseness. It gives me the greatest pleasure to join with Mr. Buckley in his expression of admiration for the hard and ill r requited, almost hopeless, 'work of our nuns, Brothers, and clergy. Without them there would be no Catholic schools. But ..Mr. Buckley advises .that their difficulties and burdens should be allowed to continue-? 1 should not even be complained of lest the, peace of secularists and atheists should be ; lest their anger, forsooth, be aroused ; lest they be checked in any. . way in their career of effort ' to destroy' Christianity * and religion.- Had the Irish people kept silent and followed the advice of men like -Mr. Buckley, .-in .what .stage would the Irish Home Government movement be at present? Can minorities by imbecile silence and a-do-nothing policy ever advance their position or resist | the agressions of the enemy •? And the enemy in • the i present case is undoubtedly agressive and checked by few qualms of conscience; honor, or justice.— l am, etc., ■. ~ - .