1st. The Higher Education.

The past year has been characterized by an unwonted activity in the consideration of the higher or University education. To enable one to appreciate the position of the parties discussing the subject, a brief outline of the history of the New Zealand and Otago Universities may not be out of place. The early settlers in Otago had looked forward to the Province having all requisite educational machinery complete within itself. This could only be accomplished by the establishment of a University. The Education Ordinances had from the earliest time assumed that a High School would be established, and when reserves were set apart for educational purposes the need of a University was distinctly and emphatically recognized. The first Crown grant of land as an educational endowment, issued 28th November, 1866, stated that the land was—"In trust for the establishment and maintenance of a University in the City of Dunedin, in the said Province, and of public schools in different parts of the Province, and for the general advancement of education in the said Province."

It was in 1860 that the Education Board urged the Government as follows:—"That the time has now come for organising the High School," &c., and the early settlers seemed to have understood that prior to a University there must be properly equipped secondary or intermediate schools. How the agitation for the erection of a University came to a head I think it better to state. Mr. Hislop, seeing the provision, by scholarships, that Tasmania made for sending some of her best scholars to England to finish their education at some University, suggested that New Zealand might follow Tasmania's example:— page 4

"A scheme of this nature, however, could be much better taken up by the Colony as a whole than by single Provinces, as its operations could then be extended to the whole of the Colony, and would thereby incite to wholesome rivalry, not only individuals and schools, but also the several Provinces. It is to be hoped that the day is not far distant when our colonial statesmen will be able to devote some small portion of their time and energies to the consideration of questions such as this, and that they will ere long adopt measures to secure that, in every succeeding year, two great New Zealand scholarships shall also be open for competition to all the youth of the Colony, and that after the first eight scholarships shall have been awarded, there shall always be eight of the most proficient of the youth of New Zealand receiving the advantage of a liberal education at the seats of learning in the mother country."

The Committee, however, recommended the foundation of eight exhibitions, two open every year, as in Tasmania.

In the House of Representatives in 1868, Sir D. Bell brought the matter of the Report of the Committee forward, and elicited that nothing had been done save the setting apart of about 4,000 acres of confiscated land as a probable endowment. The Government, seeing that something should be done to carry out the Report of the Committee, introduced a Bill to make provision for setting apart reserves for an endowment. This Bill became law, and was the University Endowment Act, 1868. Nothing very much came of that Act. The Otago Provincial Council in 1869 took up the question, and the result was the passage of the Otago University Ordinance, 1869. Up to the passing of that Ordinance the House of Representatives had tacitly assumed that the time for the establishment of a New Zealand University had not arrived.

The passing of the Otago University Ordinance awakened a farther interest in the creation of a New Zealand University, and the outcome of that awakening was the enacting by the General Assembly of the New Zealand University Act, 1870. This Act contemplated two things (a), a teaching body. Section IV says:—