, 1874-06-10

$1,000
Government control, while in Antigua
they wish to allow the clergy to
exercise a large degree of influence
over them. The Schools in Domi-
MICA, like in St. Croix, are all purely Gov
ernment SCHOOLS, having their own school
houses, while in Antigua the Government
has not a single school house they all
belong to the various denominations
which for over fifty years have kept them
in existence, and it is only Of recent years
that the Government gives anything in aid
Of education.
The Antigua New Era speaks OF the New
Education Act in the following manner:
"The Education act, 50 miscalled, is
simply a muddling make>hitt, without co.
herlncy or any other virtue, and must
surely have been passed by members from
a desire to disgrace the government by the
failure which awaits it, as In fact Mr..
BerkeIey's remarks very plainly indicate.
How does the act attempt to reform the
educational system of the colony {? Does
it abolish the denominarional system-a
system which has been condemned by Sir
Benjamin Pine, by the teachers, by the
liberal party everywhere, and by us,-and
establish a State education to be taught
by government teachers, in government
schools, exclusively paid from public
funds? Does it lid Education from the
drag chain known as "payment by
results" appropriate a sum sufficient
to meet the growing requirements of the
Schools, and raise the teachers from the
degraded position of underpaid and de-
spised kinds Never think i. 1t perpe-
tuates payment by results, perpetuates
the denominations system, which the At
torney General says is the ouIy one which
Mr.. Disraeli's government will sanction,
appropriatts the same miserable p~ittauce
as formerly, appropriates the denomina-
tIonaI school houses-and all this while it
deprives the Clergy Of the control which
they have hitherto exercised, through the
local Boards, and provides that the Scrip
lures shall not be taught in the schools.
Thus, except the provisions turning over
the functions of the local Boards to the
Governor in Council, and establishing
secular education, the act is the counter
part of the one which it repeats, and being
therefore neither one thing nor the other
is simply unWorkabIe. In the belief that
government schools would have been es-
tablished we have always advocated secu-
lar education, even at the disagreeable
risk of having our motives misrepresented
for it seems manifest to us that Morayians,
Wesleyan Methodists, Anglican Protes-
tOnts and Roman Catholics, should not,
as they happened to be teachers, be af-
forded covert facilities for teaching dis
%tinctive creeds in schools which, as we
believed, were to be erclusirely supported
from public finds. The Church OF Eng
land in this presidency has just been discs
tabIished because a large majority of US
agree in thinking that the union of Church
and State is fraught with evil in our
times. We have decided that the main
tenance and conservancy of religion in the
diversified forms which it assumes amongst
us, shall be entirely left to the respective
denominations, and it is simply a part of
the same principle that the teaching of
Scripture doctrine, Scripture history,
Scripture Cateclism, or anything else
which has the remotest tendency to pro-
mote religious proselytism, should be
sedulousIy excluded from any system of
State education. We trust that point is
quite clear to orr readers. But if the