Page:The three colonies of Australia.djvu/326

 was, that many country districts were left without schools, whilst two or three were established to educate forty or fifty scholars. At Camden there were three schools, none of which had more than twenty scholars.

In 1844 a committee of the Legislative Council, appointed to investigate the subject of colonial education, of which Robert Lowe, Esq., was chairman, reported strongly in favour of the Irish national system, observing:—

"There are about 25,676 children between the ages of four and fourteen years: of these only 7,642 receive instruction in public schools, and 4,865 in private ones, leaving about 13,000 who, as far as the committee can learn, receive no education at all. The expense of education is about 1 a head. This deficient education is partly attributable to the ignorance, dissolute habits, and avarice of too many parents, and partly to the want of good schoolmasters and schoolbooks, but a far greater proportion of the evil has arisen from the strictly denominational character of the public schools.

"The very essence of a denominational system is to leave the majority uneducated, in order thoroughly to imbue the minority with peculiar tenets. The natural result is, that where one school is founded two will arise, not because they are wanted, but because it is feared that proselytes will be made. It is a system impossible to be carried out in a thinly-inhabited country, and, being exclusively in the hands of the clergy, it places the state in the awkward dilemma of either supplying money, whose expenditure it is not permitted to regulate, or of interfering between the clergy and their superiors."

The committee further recommended the formation of a board, to be appointed by the governor, consisting of persons favourable to the plan, and possessing the confidence of the different denominations, "with a salaried secretary."

The Lord Bishop of Australia and the Roman Catholic Archbishop were both examined before this committee; both were strongly opposed to the Irish system of educating different denominations in one school, and expressed their adherence to the denominational system. The Bishop of Australia would countenance no schools in which the dogmas of the Church of England were not taught; the Roman Catholic Archbishop, in like manner, insisted on having exclusive Roman Catholic schools for the members of his church. They were both excellent, charitable, and pious men; but either was evidently prepared, if he had