398 Transactions. — Miscellaneous. 



poorer people of England need not exist in this country, for 

 the State, by means of its large reservations of public lands, 

 has provided an income sufficient to assist every intelligent 

 and ambitious youth to pursue his studies from the primary 

 school to the university. And such a plan in a new com- 

 munity like ours is reasonable, and commends itself in its 

 fullest acceptance to all who desire to see the best and most 

 promising of our young colonists receive due recognition in the 

 land of their birth. 



But even when the widest advantages are offered two 

 factors will always operate in regulating the number of those 

 who are likely to continue their studies in the higher branches 

 of learning. These are, first, the physical condition of the 

 children themselves ; and, second, the competency of parents 

 to maintain their offspring at school. It is manifest that 

 children of weak bodies are not able to pursue their studies 

 with the same power and prospect of success as those who are 

 physically strong. These latter, however, are subjected to 

 disabilities of a special kind in the case of poor parents, for 

 they are withdrawn from school at an early age in most cases 

 to enter upon the battle of life, and the field is left open 

 mostly to the children of comparatively the well-to-do, or to 

 those whose bodies are incapable of undergoing much physical 

 toil and exertion. 



It would provide a subject for an interesting inquiry were 

 it possible to follow, as it were, step by step the history — the 

 school history it ought to be — of ten thousand children from 

 the date of their entry into the schools at the age of five years 

 to the time when they ought to quit, at the close of their 

 fifteenth birthday. How many of the ten thousand would be 

 attending school at the end of the period, and why would the 

 numbers be so few '? Death would account for some ; but, in 

 any case, the results would differ widely in every hundred 

 children of the poor, of the middle well-to-do class, and of the 

 rich. The demands and needs of the poor compel parents to 

 withdraw their children from school at an early age, and the 

 higher pathways of learning are mostly left open for the bene- 

 fit of children who are more fortunate if not more capable 

 than their poorer neighbours. The law of the strongest and 

 the fittest does not operate here, for the law of parental neces- 

 sity forces the physically capable to neglect the mental part 

 of their training in order that they might minister to the 

 needs of home. But difficulties such as these, though they 

 can hardly be avoided, can be minimised. 



The freeing of the schools from the payment of fees for 

 instruction has largely added to the school attendance as 

 lately shown in England, and parents are coming to recognise 

 how important it is for their children to receive as much 



