The Pretensions of Secular Education.

Economy.—Secular Education claims to be the most economical of all systems.—It is the most costly.

In the year 1872 the education grant in Victoria was £200,000, and this sum was looked on as "appalling," and to be "considerably reduced" by the introduction of the new system.—(Hon. Mr. Langton, Argus, Wednesday 15, 1872.)—Hardly has the new system begun to work when we find Mr. Mackay, the Minister of Education, asking for £800,000! The population of Victoria was only 797,049—nearly a million of money for less than a million of people!

Under the old system the Catholics paid £50,000 a year, and received the value of their money. Now they pay three or four times as much, and receive no return whatever.—It is legalised robbery.

That the Catholics should be oppressed is a matter of course, but that the system should weigh heavily even on the Secularists, will perhaps seem surprising. Yet it is so contrived that all are unfairly taxed; that the man who needs assistance least, is most benefited by it, and that the less benefit one derives from it the more he has to pay for it. Evidently the rich man needs no assistance. Now it is precisely the rich man that derives most benefit from it, for he can easily keep his children at school for seven or eight years, while the poor woman who really needs assistance, can hardly afford to deprive herself for one or two years of her child's aid towards making out a scanty livelihood. Then even the rich man is unfairly taxed, for he receives a return for only these seven or eight years, while he must pay the education tax all his life. Still more unfairly is the poor woman taxed who receives a return for only one or two years. But most unfairly of all taxed are those who, whether poor or rich, have never had a child at all to send to school, and who, consequently, can never receive any return whatever. Of course, when Government recklessly votes £400,000 for education, the money is not straightway poured into the Government coffers from the inexhaustible purse of some beneficent fairy; but has to be collected with a ruthless hand from the hard earnings of the community. Therefore though there is nominally no education tax, this tax is really the heaviest of all; and it is precisely to give £400,000 more,—in addition to all that has been given already,—that even at a moment of such severe depression as the present, this enormous sum,—£400,000, is imposed under the name of property-tax.

"Gutter Children"—It professes to charge itself with the education of the poor neglected children, nicknamed "gutter children."—It has not done so. It has filled its schools with the children of well-to-do parents.

It leaves the "gutter children," even after this lapse of time, still in the gutter, and if ever it drives these poor waifs into the schools, it will drive the others out.

Denominationalism.—It pretends to undenominational.—It is the most denominational of all. It is the unidenominational or onedenominational system.

The secularists are a section of the community just as much as the Jews, the Wesleyans, the Protectionists, the Freetraders, &c. And just like them the Secularists are named or denominated according to the views they hold. And whereas the reliqious denominations would be satisfied with teaching their own children, this irreligious denomination insists on imposing its irreligion on all.

Sectarianism.—It professes to be a sovereign remedy for "sectarian bitterness."—It promotes it in the highest degree.

We Catholics have no bitterness, no nicknames for our fellow-citizens. For us they are Wesleyans, Presbyterians, Jews, Secularists—whatever they wish to call themselves. But we are "Papists, Romanists, Ultramontanes;" we are "ignorant, bigoted, superstitious, priest-ridden," &c., &c. The remedy for "sectarian bitterness" would be to induce the various sects to leave us in peace as we leave them. The remedy of the secular system is on the one hand to give those who hate us the gratification of seeing us despoiled, and the hope of seeing us one day yield to legal robbery, and give up the religion themselves abandoned long ago, and on the ether to fill us with a burning sense of wrong and persecution.^{* †}

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Civilisation.—Finally, secular education professes to lead the people to the highest point of civilisation.—It uncivilises and degrades them.—In fine this miserable system of education does none of the things it promises to do, and all the things it promises not to do.

It is with this last point that I propose to deal at present. I shall set before my readers this boasted secular civilisation as understood and explained by Secularists, and I shall draw from their own premises certain most startling conclusions.