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possession of which no human judgment can absolutely decide.

Moreover, to make the position of schoolmaster a probationary one, having in view a higher and different office, does not appear to be a means of raising a teacher’s office, either in his own estimation or that of society. However good the results may have been in individual cases, serious objections would arise in following such a practice generally. In the first place the master, from having a different calling in view, would be likely to be dissatisfied with the one in which he was engaged, and to underrate its duties and responsibilities. A second objection arises in the case of men of the character given above; they have, from their previous want of special training, had no experience in systematically dividing their time among the different classes of the school. Their strong feeling with regard to the importance of religious teaching, leads them to devote too large a share of their time to the elder children who are more capable of apprehending and profiting by their lessons, and to give too little time and prominence to what is a very important part of their duties—the teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic to the junior classes in their school.

The observations of the Commissioners confirm them in believing the last objection to be by no means a speculative one. It would seem that all motives which tend to promote unequal attention to different branches of education, should, as far as possible be avoided, and that teachers should rather be encouraged by the prospect of promotion to positions of higher trust and emolument in their own profession than by looking forward to belonging to another.

It appears from the evidence collected by the Commission that the system hitherto pursued in Canterbury is unsatisfactory in a religious point of view to many of the leading members of two at least of the religious bodies in the province.

The Presbyterians generally are dissatisfied with it, and desire to see it abolished, they regard it as an infringement of Presbyterian principles, being practically a denial of the parity of Presbyterian Ministers. The Wesleyans have expressed their wishes no less decidedly, that the Educational measures should be placed on a more satisfactory basis, and their willingness to co-operate in a general scheme, provided that the Bible be read daily in the schools, and due provision made to guard against any teacher being appointed whose religious, or at least moral, character is not well known.

To sum up the foregoing remarks, the Commissioners wish to draw attention especially to the following points.

1st. The Religious Elements of which the community is made up are in such proportions, and so locally distributed as to render it impracticable even if desirable to organize any system of religious instruction, which would provide for the imparting religious teaching to all the children in the various schools, according to the special requirements of each Religious denomination.

2nd. If such an arrangement were practicable, parents do not for the most part keep their distinctive religious tenets in view in making choice of a school, but rather the general efficiency of the master.

3rd. In their arrangements in their several schools the religious bodies have as a rule entirely abstained from interfering with the religious teaching, and have left the adjustment of religious difficulties to the good sense of the masters.

4th. The Commission have given their opinion as to what constitutes religious teaching. The facts which came under their notice in visiting the schools throughout the province, lead them to believe that the efficiency of such teaching varies directly as the efficiency of the secular teaching, and depends on the character and ability of the master, not to any external influence or the connection of the schools with the different religious bodies.

5th. While they consider that the appointment of teachers without taking strict account of their religious and moral character would be most injurious to the cause of education generally, the Commission are of opinion that the appointment of teachers principally on religious grounds, making religious zeal a qualification to counterbalance the want of special training, is wrong in principle and faulty in practice.

6th. The evidence given to the Commission shows that the present system is open to grave objections on the part of the religious denominations themselves.

The above considerations convince the Commission that the so-called denominational system which has hitherto been tried in Canterbury does not compensate for the difficulties and complications to which it necessarily gives rise, by the attainment of a higher standard of religious teaching than could be attained with a less complicated machinery, and that to continue a system which was considered from the first to be a temporary expedient would be in the highest degree unadvisable.

The Commission do not think it necessary to enter into a discussion of the opinion held by some that all but purely secular knowledge should be banished from our schools. Such a course would not satisfy the wants of the people generally, and further, without entering into the religious question, it would be impossible in any system of teaching which professed to fit men for the social and civil duties of everyday life to ignore the existence of Christianity as pervading the laws, literature, and institutions of the civilised world. In a Christian country no one could be called educated who was ignorant of the Christian Scriptures, to which our civil institutions are so largely indebted.

Assuming, then, that Christianity must be taught in our schools, it remains to consider the footing on which religious teaching should stand in its connection with secular instruction, and the position which the State occupies in regulating the educational arrangements in the schools which it supports or assists.