USE AND ABUSE OP EXAMINATIONS. 
§55 
With these notions I am much tempted to agree. I have long 
regarded scholarships and such like devices as of dubious benefit. I 
am inclined to think that if the value of all scholarships were fused 
and poured into one common pot for the reduction of the expense of 
higher education to individuals, then more benefit would accrue to the 
individual citizen through the mass than now accrues to the community 
through the specific few. This arrangement might mitigate the evils 
complained of with so much justice. I believe, of course, in getting a 
quid pro quo for all outlay, but there should be more patience in 
waiting for the quid, whilst it is possible that the highest result of all 
would be, in these democracies, improvement in the tone and character 
of the democracies themselves. Democracy without the highest 
education is mere blind adventure and childish experiment, involving, 
nevertheless, serious results. The first and natural corollary of a 
democracy is high education free.* 
As to the machinery of examination, one may say that it has 
been perfected with as much ingenuity as has been brought to bear 
on any institution in our days. The examinations I believe to be 
carried on with unimpeachable fairness and thoroughness. The 
average results are found to be quite just and equitable. The cry of 
the plucked one is sometimes bitter — it is usually querulous and akin 
to the morning groan of him who has drunk not wisely hut too well. 
Naturally it has been found to be good fun to pull an examiner 
and his papers to pieces, just as it amuses to quote absurdities 
from examination papers against the teachers. Humanity is indul- 
gent to its own dulness and slowness, while it enjoys an 
occasional tilt at schoolmasters, examiners, clergymen, and others 
who endeavour to move matters along. Examination Avork, however, 
is most carefully done, and owes no mail anything in this 
respect.f I have never heard of any case of connivance, cheating, 
or mismanagement in the conduct of public examiuations throughout 
the Empire. Can anyone, for instance, bring forward a case parallel 
to the following reported from San Francisco, and mentioned by a 
speaker at an American Education Conference as being within his 
own experience ? To show with what ease papers prepared for the 
examination were accessible the evening before a certain scholarship 
examination, the Ban Francisco Bulletin published the w'hole of the 
papers ready for setting in the competition commencing next day, with 
the result that the examinations had to he abandoned. The speaker 
goes on to say that, in consequence, the whole system of competitive 
scholarships was abandoned.^ This story reveals a condition of things 
which within the same department of work is without parallel in the 
history of British examinations. 
Dp to this date the pressure of examinations has not been felt in 
the same degree in these colonies as is the case in the mother country. 
Grammar school education is not yet organised, while our universities 
are not wealth v enough to dangle tempting baits before ambitious 
* Aristotle : Politics ii., ch. 5. “ For a State regarded as a multitude should be 
brought into unity and community of feeling by education. . . . just as in 
Lacedaemon property has been made common. ’ The context clearly implies that 
education or, as he calls it further on, intellectual cultivation should be free. 
t The late Oscar Browning at Internat. Conference on Education iii., p. 19 < . 
% Amer. Bureau of Education, p. 222, Report 1889-1890. 
