Education.

With regard to education, I may say at once that I am an ardent believer in education and I go the length of saying, that of all our branches of education, I will never touch the universities. My theory is that the university is the salvation of a country. We must have men able to go below the surface, and to tell us in times like these where the truth lies, and we cannot do that unless we have well educated men trained in our universities. We must have efficient moans of transmitting and preserving knowledge. Our secondary schools might be made more efficient than they are, and might be reduced to uniformity, the same as the primary schools They ought to be put on a sound basis, a uniform basis like the primary schools, and I think the giving scholarships to the best and most promising pupils of the primary schools might be continued and extended. I should also increase the number of secondary school pupils by admitting free such persons as the sons of clergymen who can ill afford the expense. I would never consent to shut up the secondary schools. With regard to the primary schools, I do not believe in impairing their efficiency. If parents can allow their children to stay at school until they pass the fifth or sixth standards, it is to the advantage of the colony to allow them to do so. The cost wisely falls upon the taxpayer, for if the cost fell upon the parents, in many cases the children would not be educated. The bachelor need not quarrel with the system because he has to contribute a little to the cost of educating other people's children. I know that when I was a bachelor I found it easier by a good deal to live with 10s a week than I have since found it to do with £1,000 a year and a big family. The salvation of every man in the colony depends upon the conservation of the intelligence of the whole population. But, gentlemen, I hold that there is no necessity, particularly in our large towns. I do not say that it is applicable to the country districts, where the number of scholars is small; I do not think it would be at all applicable in such cases; but in the large towns I say it is perfectly ridiculous to provide State nurseries for the large number of very young children who are admitted to our schools. I affirm that we have done quite enough when we allow children who are seven years of age into our public schools, lam well acquainted with physiology as applied to children, and I say that no child would derive any disadvantage from being kept from school, from an educational point of view, while he was a day under seven years of age. I have never had any of my own children taught until they were seven. If this principle were carried out in our largo towns it would relieve the congestion of school accommodation, and enable a saving to be made in expenditure. Then, again, it has occurred to me that we might do something like this: There is no doubt that the making of the consolidated revenue bear the entire weight of education encourages the local bodies to say, "Let us get as much as we can." That is the principle which, at all hazards, we must check. Our object should rather be to try to make them do with as little as can be done with consistently with efficiency, and therefore I think it would be advisable, instead of making the cost of school buildings, etc., fall entirely on the consolidated revenue, we should have a small local rate, which could be collected without expense, by simply adding it to the ordinary municipal or road board rate. Though small, it would be sufficient to check the spirit, that I have alluded to, and would tend to render us more economical.