Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/189



the broad fact of their democratic basis, the most general and most remarkable feature in connection with the social and political development of the Australian colonies is the general system of public education that has been adopted. Education has, in fact, been made a State Department, and is managed on strictly unsectarian, or, if you will, nonreligious, lines. Free, secular, and compulsory, these three words form the magic talisman that has enabled the colonial politician to overcome the opposition of the Churches and sects, each of which, it may be fairly assumed, was anxious that at least its own religious creeds and formularies should be expounded in the public schools, at the public expense.

Why, it may be asked, have these young communities been so eager to compel their children to be educated up to certain standards, at the cost of