. 406 Transactions, — Miscellaneous. 
inconsiderable section of the working classes, who feel that as a body they 
have neither part nor lot in them; while they afford a cheap education of 
the higher kind to the children of rich men. I do not assert that these 
feelings are justified ; I merely observe that they exist. Still they are well- 
founded, to the extent that our system of secondary education is not being 
conducted on sufficiently comprehensive lines. Much as I admire the noble 
High Schools and Colleges of Canterbury, I should rejoice to see some one of 
them in Christchurch replaced by a well-equipped Technical College, where 
our handicraftsmen and their sons could obtain a special education, which 
would enable them to hold their own against all-comers, and to easily 
advance with and adapt their methods of working to the changes and 
improvements which are being so rapidly introduced into the industrial 
arts, while at the same time their intellectual desires would be slaked, 
honourable and recognized distinctions would be within their reach, and 
the social status of the artizan would be raised in a marked degree, to the 
satisfaction of his own just ambition and the benefit of the community. 
The working population of Canterbury, at all events, have a right to ask 
this at our hands. They are entitled to demand that the wise intentions of 
the Provincial Council in their behalf should be carried into effect at the 
earliest possible moment. 
Without however dwelling too much on this point, althioubh it is an im- 
portant one, I do maintain that we ought to interpret the term ‘‘secondary 
education " in a larger sense than as meaning the teaching of literary sub- 
jects and abstract science only. Doubtless it bore that meaning—and even 
a more restricted meaning—once, but the world has rolled on, and the 
statesman in this and other countries is now called upon to solve the great 
problem :—Given a working population, forming the mass of the com- 
munity, who have eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and whose 
wants and desires, both mental and physical, have been sharpened and 
inereased thereby, how will you keep them contented? The way to do so 
is by raising the status of the workman. It is not sufficient to tell him that 
his employment is honourable, and that no citizen is more useful to the 
State than he; you must give him a larger scope for his energies and in 
his own avocation, so that he may be enabled to achieve real distinction in 
it. We must dispel the prevalent idea—that if the artizan wants to rise in 
the social scale he must perforce abandon his own occupation, which is the 
natural field for the display of his abilities. 
Leaving aside these reflections, however, our artizans are entitled to ask 
the rulers of the country to give them all reasonable assistance in their 
competition with foreign handicraftsmen. It is a reasonable request to 
make that technical schools should be established in the principal towns of 
