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The Pamphlet Collection of Sir Robert Stout: Volume 40

Extract from Speech of the Hon. Sir William Fox, K.C.M.G., Delivered in the House of Representatives, in Wellington, New Zealand, 14th July, 1880

page 16

Extract from Speech of the Hon. Sir William Fox, K.C.M.G., Delivered in the House of Representatives, in Wellington, New Zealand, 14th July, 1880.

Sir,—* * * believe, if we had the means of ascertaining the feelings and opinions of the fathers and mothers of the children of this country at this moment, we should find an overwhelming majority in favour of the introduction, to a limited extent, of religious teaching in the Government schools—to the extent which I should propose myself. I am not making this assertion altogether at haphazard, although I am free to admit that we have not at this moment any positive proof of what is the opinion of the heads of families in this country. Although there have been laid upon the table of the House since the Education Act was passed, particularly last session and the session before, a very considerable number of petitions indicating the opinions prevailing in the minds of a very large proportion of the people of this country, yet what the exact proportion is we have not the means of ascertaining. But in our intercourse with private individuals of the country every now and again we come upon some person who has taken trouble in this matter, and within a limited area has applied a test, which leads me to the conclusion at which I have arrived, that a very large and overwhelming proportion of the heads of families are in favour of the introduction of religious instruction into our public schools. Sir, I hold in my hand here a letter from a clergyman in the Province of Hawke's Bay, who some years ago resided in the Province of Nelson, and it has fallen to his lot, in both those provincial districts, to make a house-to-house canvass upon this very question. I will read a paragraph from his letter, which will show the result of what has come within his own knowledge. He is a gentlemen of experience, and he may be relied upon as to the accuracy of his statement. He says : "From an experience of thirteen years in testing the public feeling in this matter by personal canvass, I thoroughly indorse the Hon. Mr. Bowen's remarks, when advocating the introduction of the Bible in public schools, that nineteen-twentieths of the people desire it. In 1867 I took a petition round a village in the then Province of Nelson—Riwaka—in favour of Bible-reading in the Riwaka school; and out of fifty householders forty-nine signed it, and the fiftieth, though he had personal reasons for not attaching his signature, expressed himself in favour of it. Again in 1870-71 I canvassed Wakefield, in the old Province of Nelson, in favour of Bible-reading in the Wakefield schools, and got fully nine-tenths of the householders to sign it and express approval of the object with more or less emphasis. In 1873 an attempt was made by some members of the then Central Board of Education in Nelson, by petition to the Provincial Council, to secularize the Provincial Education Act of Nelson by excising its religious clauses. Mr. page 17 Shephard, M.H.R. for Waimea, will remember this. The people immediately took it up, not the clergy, and a petition against the proposed measure was framed by a layman, Mr. J. W. Barnicoat, the Speaker of the Provincial Council of Nelson, at the request of a layman, Mr. Masters, a farmer in Wakefield. This petition was signed by over 1,100 householders. A second petition was started at the same time in advocacy of the measure, but it obtained no support, only 134 names being found on it. In the City of Nelson 500 householders signed the petition against the exclusion of the undenominational-religious-teaching clause—the 37th of the Act—and the utmost that could be obtained in favour of its excision was 34. I canvassed the City of Nelson myself at that time, so can speak with certainty. The effect of these petitions on the Provincial Council of Nelson was that it refused to secularize the Education Act, but defined the time when the Bible was to be read." * * *

There is another point of view from which I approach this subject, and that is this: I think it is an indignity offered by ourselves to ourselves—if I may say so—that, in a country at least nine-tenths of the inhabitants of which profess a religion of some sort or another, based upon what we know as the sacred Scriptures, the sacred Scriptures themselves should be the only book that is interdicted in our schools. You may teach the religion of Confucius; you may teach the religion of the Brahmins; you may teach the whole of the ancient mythology, including everything about Jupiter, Mars, Venus, and their loves, and so on; you may teach them that ad nauseam—you may cram their minds with things of that sort; but you are on no account to let them know that there is a God in heaven, or to mention the name of our Saviour. Any master who would dare to open his lips and tell a child anything on these heads during the hours of instruction would be dismissed. I am told that in Victoria the Minister of Education, a very different one, I hope, from ours—actually went through all the common education books—Nelson's and Collins's—and struck out everything that had the least shade of religious teaching in it Well, we are not so bad as that; and I say, as a citizen of this country, as a member of a community which forms part of a Christian nation, that it is an indignity that this Book, the only book which is the foundation of our national religious faith, should be the only book in the whole circle of our literature which is excluded from our schools. I may be told that we have no national religion. That is true, in one sense: that is to say, we have no State Church—the State does not identify itself with any special form of religion : but the identification of the nation with the Christian faith is complete; and I appeal to you, Sir, to say whether the book in front of you, from which the prayer is read every day, is not a proof that we are a Christian nation. What is that prayer read for, if we are not a Christian nation? You may read a Mohammedan prayer, or anything else you like; page 18 but, as long as we have evidence of the fact that we use Christian prayers, I think we may call ourselves, to all intents and purposes, a Christian nation, and I say that it is unfair, it is unjust, and an insult to the national character, that this book, the basis of our whole faith, should be the only book in the whole course of our literature which is excluded from our schools. And, Sir, I believe that we ourselves and the Colony of Victoria are the only two peoples—if I may dignify ourselves by such a name—we are the only two peoples amongst the nations of the earth who have deliberately abolished religious instruction from the schools. It is done completely in Victoria, and it is done nearly as completely here. I know of no other country where this is the case. In any other country where there is a religious faith pervading the mass of the people, provision is made for the teaching of some portion of that faith in the schools of the country. I know we shall be told that this is not so in America. I have been a good deal in America, and I know something about it, and I venture to say that in by far the larger proportion of the American schools at this moment the Bible is read, and in a great portion of them Christian hymns are introduced, in addition to the reading of the Bible. It is a great mistake to say that the American system is altogether a secular system. It never was so in the New England States, and, if religious instruction has fallen into desuetude in some of the States, which may be the case, still there is no absolute prohibition. Then take the Continental nations—France, Prussia, and many others that I could mention. As far as I am aware, religious instruction is given in some shape or other in the schools of those nations; and let me say, further, that within the last few weeks the Parliament of the Colony of New South Wales, in which, for twenty years past, a bitter struggle on this question has been going on, appears to have solved the problem to its own satisfaction by passing, by an enormous majority, a Bill which introduces religious instruction into the schools on a basis which might be very well adopted here, and which is not open to the ordinary objections that are urged to religious teaching. But in any proposition which I shall make I think it absolutely essential that there should be what is known as a conscience clause and a time-table. I wish to work on the lines laid down by Mr. Forster's English Bill, which has been in operation in England a dozen years or more. No doubt honorable members have read that Bill, and will recollect what it provides. It provides that, at some time during school hours, at a time to be permanently fixed by the School Board, religious instruction shall be given for a specified time; and then comes the conscience clause, which says that any parent may withdraw his children during the time in which religious instruction is given. There is no inconvenience. I have heard pathetic speakers sometimes address themselves to the agony of the poor children waiting in the wet while their companions were receiving religious teaching, page 19 and so on. Well, Sir, the best proof of the success of the system is that in England it has been working for about twelve years, and has given entire satisfaction there. In the London Board schools, where, of all places, people's religious feelings would be most likely to be hurt by the introduction of this system into education, and where some two hundred thousand are being educated by the State, there have been withdrawals of only one in every four thousand under the conscience clause for the half-hour during which religious instruction is given. What evidence can be more satisfactory than that? I read in the reports of the inspectors throughout England a unanimous concurrence of opinion that any religious difficulty, if it even practically existed, has been entirely got over. There was one district, certainly, which set us the example which we have followed, and that was the district under the Birmingham Board; but what was the result there? They persevered for eight or ten years in the system in which they started, but they had to give it up. Larrikinism and rowdyism, and evils of every description, were growing to such a fearful extent, and popular feeling was so strongly in favor of religious instruction being imparted, that it had to be adopted. * *

I have heard that it was said by an honorable and gallant gentleman in another Chamber, to which I must not further allude, that it was not the business of the State to give religious instruction—that we all get our religious training at our mothers' knees. Did these young larrikins get their religions training from their mothers? Evidently they did not. And anybody who knows anything of the rising generation must be aware that a proportion of their mothers are degraded and debased to a degree which makes them utterly incapable of imparting religious instruction. And more than that: there are hundreds of those whom we know to be decent and respectable women who are incapable of doing it. Therefore, if we are to depend upon the religious instruction given at the mother's knee, I am afraid it will not reach a large proportion of the class of children to which I have alluded. And then, Sir, with regard to these mothers themselves in the next generation, we have to think of them, and of how they will grow up. If they grow up without any religious teaching, what sort of mothers will they make? And if the children of the next generation grow up without any religious training from their mothers, what sort of women will there be in the generation that comes after them? A woman must have religious feeling : her whole nature is subject to it. To quote the words of the great Book itself, "Her desire is to her husband." It is the nature of women to lean on others. A woman who has not a God will have a devil. You must bear that in mind. You must remember that you are training these women up to be the mothers of the larrikins of the future if you do not give them religious instruction; and we must take care that their being shall not be dwarfed and degraded and debased by the absence of religious instruction.