And I now come to a subject on which, I know, there is some difference of opinion. I come now to the question of aiding higher education. I find throughout the colony—and I suppose it will be the same here—that people will say, "Oh, by all means maintain the primary schools, but as for grammar schools and high schools, those who want that kind of education should pay for it." (Hear, hear.) I am glad to hear that u hear, hear "—(laughter),—because it shows me that there are some people in this room to be convinced, and I am going to try to do so. (Cheers and laughter). First, I ask you, what would be involved if there were no high schools and no universities in this colony. I do not need to prove to you that no university could exist without Government assistance in different ways. No university in the world perhaps has ever been created without either through the beneficence of some exceedingly wealthy men or State aid. We have not an exceeding number of wealthy men, who either can afford or perhaps are willing to found universities in our midst, and if, therefore, the State is to stop aid to our higher education, New Zealand would be without high schools, and without a university. Now, what would happen? So far as your wealthy people are concerned, they do not even make use of your universities when you have them here. They can afford to send their children page 7 to England or Scotland or Germany for their education. You take up the list of students in Oxford, Cambridge, and Edinburgh, and you will see the names of colonial lads whose fathers have been able to send them there to obtain a higher education.. So far as the wealthy people in this colony are concerned, they don't need your assistance, and some of them do not take advantage of it. But I ask you what is to happen to your youth, who, perhaps endowed with genius, endowed with great intelligence, is yet poor and unable to obtain a higher education? What is to happen to him? Is he to be condemned to this lower plane and to this lower level? What is to happen to him? Are you to have no high school, no high education, and no chance for him? Do not think I am picturing something that is not likely to happen. I have been a fellow-student with lads whose fathers were poor, aye, poorer than the poorest labouring man in Auckland, who through our Scotch system of having higher education were attended to. (How little many of my fellow-colonists realise what the State is doing for them in this respect). I have known poor places where the labouring man was content perhaps with Is. a day, and never exceeding Is. 2d., where he had to pay fees out of his earnings, and where there were school rates also, to keep up some higher education, not, to keep up merely primary schools. The school I was brought up at was a school for the poor, not a school for the rich. If it had been a school for the rich I should not have had a chance of being educated. (Cheers). We were taught Latin, Greek, French, mathematics, and through these means what happened? I can point even to one fellow-student of myself dimply the son of a bootmaker whose earnings were not equal to the earnings of any bootmaker in Auckland, and whose son finished his education at Tubingen University through getting proper education at the parish school and getting a bursary, and getting into the University. You do not know, some of you, what some Scotch boys have to do in order to get higher education. In England until lately there was very little chance given to poorer English boys. I have seen the students of Edinburgh bringing their barrels of meal, dried fish, and perhaps cheese, and having to live on that, and having to go and work to herd cows during the summer in order to maintain themselves. I say we have not been driven to that here, but if you sweep away all aid from higher education, you are condemning the sons of the poor amongst you to have no chance of rising in life, and to become distinguished. I say hold fast to the high schools. If I had my way I should make the high schools as free as primary schools here. (Cheers.) I would say there should be no limit to the bright boy, the boy of genius, getting the best education the world can give him. (Cheers.) What are some of those who condemn higher education. I would like to ask them if they should (I do not think they would) place themselves in the position of a poor boy anxious to obtain a higher education, and to be turned round on and told if you want a higher education pay for it. What mockery that would be. Why, some of the most brilliant students I have known have been the sons of poor men, who have had nothing but hard work and a determined spirit to bring them on. (Loud cheers.) Why even take our able Professor of Chemistry in the Otago University. What had he to do earn his living—he who obtained the high distinction of Doctor of Science of the Edinburgh University? He had during the summer months, in order to obtain a little money to attend the University, he had to herd cows. If we are—if this nation is ts be raised higher in the social and intellectual scale, we will have to give opportunity to every poor boy to obtain the highest possible education that can be given. (Cheers.) I ask you to remember also, looking at that from another point of view, what is it that makes a nation great? Do you think it is wealth alone? (A voice: No.) What is it makes a nation great? After all, a nation's greatness depends on its great men. If you read history, what do you find? The nation reckoned great is the nation which produces great men. When we look at the pages of Grecian history, what is it that recalls to us the greatness of Athens, or those noble Grecians in the past? It was its great men. And so it is always. It is the man of genius that elevates the nation more than the nation elevates the man of genius. And as one writer has said—I will quote it to you, because I thoroughly agree with it—perhaps he puts it in better language than I could put it in. He says: "But as the value of a nation to the human race does not depend on its wealth or numbers, so it does not depend even upon the distribution of elemantary knowledge, but upon the high water mark of its educated mind. Before the permanent tribunal copyists, and popularisers count for nothing, and even the statistics of common schools are of secondary value." I say now, if you in Auckland are to say, Down with the higher education, down with the high schools, it simply means this, that you are con- page 10 I remember coming to this one passage in the life of Abraham Lincoln on this very question—(cheers)—one, I believe, of the grandest men of our race. He was twitted by some Northern men who were really in favour of Southern slavery. "Oh," they said, "why did not Abraham Lincoln, if he was really sincere in abolition, at once publish a proclamation when he assumed office freeing the slaves? Why wait until many years after, when so much blood had been spilt, and when it was practically forced upon him? " Well, his biographer gives a reason for that, and he says this, and I say it has a practical application in New Zealand at the present. "Doubtless he had an ideal, but it was the ideal of a practical statesmen—to aim at the best, and to take the next best if he is lucky enough to get even that. (Laughter). It is loyalty to great ends, even though forced to combine the small and opposing motives of selfish men to accomplish them. It is the anchored cling to solid principles of duty and action which knows how to swing with the tide, but is never carried away by it—that we demand in public men, and not sameness of policy, a conscientious persistence in what is conpracticable. For the impracticable, however theoretically enticing, is always politically unwise, sound statesmanship being the application of that prudence to the public business which is the safest guide in that of private life. Well, then, that is a guide for you and for me. It is a maxim we have to keep in mind—that if we cannot get the ideally best we may get the next best, and if we cannot get the next best, we must strive to get as near it as possible. So I say you must remember this, that these statesmen, the politicians of our colony, are what you as constituents make them, and ii they are not carrying out these high ideals, if they are not able to accomplish this end, who is to blame? If each elector would hold his high ideal before him, and so act by his vote, you would find your politicians and members of the Government so acting that you would have no fault to find with their action. If you send men to the House and do dot aid them and cheer them in their arduous work, and if you seem to pay no attention to them, and to think they have nothing of troubles and trials, if you do not give them your enthusiastic support, if you are not fired with enthusiasm to help them to carry out their work, do not grumble if they fail. Their failure is caused by you. If, however, as colonists, all of us were fired by this enthusiasm to carry out these political ideas, so that our nation would be grander than any nation in the past, so that our own children rising up amongst us should have cause to say that their parents acted nobly, and had a noble national life, and loved the State, then you would have no fault to find. I often think we are not half educated to love the State. I find all over the colony that people have an idea that the Government is a great dispenser of favours. I say that tends to destroy the State. You ought to look to the State as the representative of you. I would like to see you so fired with enthusiasm about your schools that in a district where there is no school you would say: We will give half a day to help to build it, and give some of our means to assist, because we know this school would benefit our race and our young people. And if anything should threaten the State—though I need hardly mention this to an Auckland audience, remembering how nobly you acted in the past—if war comes amongst us, instead of arguing with the Government for capitation allowances, I hope to see you act as your fathers did before you, and show a true national feeling and love of the State. I say if you are inspired with this national life and anthusiasm about politics, then you will be doing some of your duty in the world; and do not think because you may not even be electors, because you are not representatives, or because you are not members of the Government, that therefore you have not high duties and responsibilities. Why, it has been said—some scientific man has said—that each atom has an effect on all atoms around it; that if you throw a stone in a pool the eddies will be felt on the outer edges, however large the pool is. What do you think would be the effect of a sincere and honest man in the midst of a dozen working with him. What is the effect of one single honest enthusiastic man in any cause? I say the effect is electrical, and is such as one cannot even define; and if you, as electors of this colony, having these ideals before you, were to act them out in your daily life, thinking it your duty to make the race and the State better than they have been, you would be doing, each in his own sphere, an incalculable benefit; at all events, it would be said about ycu when the time came when you will be no more that you had done your duty as a citizen. I do not know any grander epitaph that could be ascribed to any man's memory than this: He loved his family, he loved his children, and he was always help ful to those around him with kindness, though he may not have had any money, and that as a citizen, carrying out a citizen's duty, he had a single eye to the page 11 future, a single ideal to see a more perfect type of humanity and of a State. I say I do not know any grander epitaph than that. If we were only all of us, I do not leave out myself, fired with this enthusiasm having before us this ideal, we would be doing our duty in the world, and when we leave it, we should leave it better than we found it. (Cheers.) Now, let me end by giving you one or two verses, which you perhaps may remember—I am sorry I cannot quote the whole poem—from a poet whom I do not think is half appreciated amongst us—a poet who has written many noble and many good things. I mean Robert Buchanan. Let we give you two or three verses from his poem what he pictured to be a perfect State :—

Where is the perfect State
Early most blest and late,
Perfect and bright
Tis where no palace stands
Trembling on shifting sands
Morning and night.
'Tis where the soil is free
Where, far as eye may see
Scattered o'er hill and lea
Homesteads abound.
Where clean and broad and sweet
Market-square, land and street
Belted by leagues of wheat
Cities are found.

Where is the perfect State,
Early, most blest and late,
Gentle and good?
'Tis where no lives are seen
Huddling in lanes unseen,
Crying for food.
'Tis where the home is pure,

'Tis where the bread is sure,
'Tis where the wants are fewer
And each want fed.
Where plenty and peace abide,
Where health dwells heavenly-eyed,
Where in nooks beautified
Slumber the dead.

Where is the perfect State,
Unvexed by wrath and hate
Quiet and just?
Where to no form of creed
Fettered are thought and deed,
Reason and trust.
'Tis where the great free mart
Broadens, while from its heart
Forth the great ships depart,
Blown by the wind.
'Tis where the wise men's eyes,
Fixed on the earth and skies,
Seeking for signs, devise
Good for mankind.