Will Insist on Radical Reforms.

The better way can only be demonstrated by experiment; let proposed reforms be subjected to trial, and that without delay. No one need be surprised that the first scheme issued by the department was imperfect; nothing but a miracle could have made it otherwise. We have now seventeen years' experience to go upon, and that is more than sufficient to warrant a change. A public education system is a boon to society in any form, but the form it has taken in New Zealand has done much to neutralise its benefits, and, though it gives us education, it is education of an inferior order. Let the lessons of experience be utilised; let the boon of education be given to the nation in its best form; so shall the future of the colony be made bright with hope, being based on the intelligence of its population and on the wisdom acquired from knowledge; so shall New Zealand become the land of the thoughtful and the gifted, where, as time unrolls its ages, the problems of society shall receive their wisest solution and the puzzles of existence their most satisfactory explanation.