310 PROCEEDINGS OP THE VICTORIA INSTITUTE. 
and promote the development of whatever there is of truth- 
fulness and honesty in the human nature, and the experience 
■of centuries' shows us that this can only be a truly national 
and secular system of education. I have said these things 
almost daily for years while in office. The first object 
of national secular education is the inculcation (not teaching) 
of the first Commandment and the second is the inculcation 
of the second Commandment. The fundamental basis of 
Education must be the Rule of Life. However grand your 
education may be, it is nothing without this basis, namely, 
the moral Law and this must be inculcated not taught. This 
can only be done in secular schools or in such schools as are 
practically secular whatever denomination they may assume. 
The virtue, happiness and freedom of every individual depends 
on education, and it must be the aim of every friend of the 
people (using that word in its widest sense), to secure a 
thoroughly sound system of education for the people just as it is 
the aim of every one hostile to the people, their freedom and 
happiness, to prevent if possible such education being given and 
when that is impossible to pervert and destroy it or to nullify 
its effects and results. 
In pursuance of such views I always endeavoured to bring 
home to teachers that the inculcation of honesty, industry and 
thrift was an essential part of national and secular education. 
These virtues indeed flow from the principles already laid down 
and it also follows that the object of public education is not the 
benefit or aggrandizement of any class or particular set of the 
community nor the extension of the power or influence of any 
class or set. 
Hence in my report for 1885-6-7 I wrote as follows : 
If the Education Department were as autonomous as other 
branches of the public service are, and if it had the same power 
to make its work effective, its efficiency would be greatly m- 
creased. In every other sphere of human activity it is recognized 
that business can only be successfully carried on by those to 
whom it is of first importance and not subordinated to any.othet 
function. When this truth is as fully recognised with regard to 
education as it now is in regard to all other functions, a vei> 
great amelioration may be expected in this most important an 
vital one. Points now looked on as hardly attaching to educa 
tion, but in reality as necessary as any others .to the welfare 0 
the individual and of the.community, will have to be . include 
within its scope. The business of national. education is not alone 
the Teaching of the. three Rs, but everything that concerns t ie 
life of the individual as citizen and subject It is certain t a 
