For it is undeniably the duty of every government, and the principal object for which they are formed or allowed to exist, to ensure, as far as possible, the performance of their tasks, and the adoption of all measures, representative or remedial, precautionary or penal, which are necessary to the maintenance of order, and the well-being of the community over which it is placed. It matters not to this question what may be the external form of such government, despotic, democratic, or mixed. If the whole mass governed, the duty aforesaid would be equally incumbent on them, because, though owed to themselves solely, it would be equally their duty, as indeed a necessity, to maintain their social organisation.

Below all measures that can be devised for the maintenance of the well being of society, it is now generally acknowledged that none is more effectual than the proper education of children. To anticipate and prevent the growth of vice in the infant must be allowed to be better than only to attempt to check and repress it in the full grown man. Better said earlier to destroy the seedlings of vice, than to clear away the forest. Better, wiser, and safer, to neutralise in their inactive and embryonic state the evil agencies which, suffered to grow and gather, centrifugal force tends to scatters and eventually disorganise society—does vastly to attempt to stifle them when mature and ready for explosion. The policy of educating for virtue is profounder than that of punishing for crime. The schoolmaster will one day be considered a more potential governor than the judge; and the wisely written though unpretending story-book a mightier instrument for good than the elaborate statute-book.

But it is also undeniable that there has always been in every society, and is every probability there always will be, a considerable number of individuals who cannot themselves perform the duty of providing their children with proper education, and of others who wilfully neglect it. And it is equally undeniable that the voluntary efforts, even of societies the most praiseworthy in this particular, have always been (and there is every reason to suppose they always will be) inadequate to supply the means for the general performance of this duty.

It is, then, the duty of the government to provide education, where unavoidable circumstances prevent the parents, and society sustains, from providing it; and is the right and duty, and wisest policy of government to compel parents to give their children the benefit of such education when provided. There need be no fear on this score why a government should, by legislative enactment, compel parents to provide children destitute of it, with moral, then even, as ours has already done, with physical sustenance.

But the education to be provided, to be compulsory, must of course be such as all parents alike may without violence to conscientious scruples be compelled to send their children to partake of.

Now under the present system education cannot be made compulsory, because it can only be provided by Government, in association with such of the various sects of religionists, as have acknowledged head in themselves. To say nothing of those which have not, it follows that particular schools for every sect must be provided, or parents of one sect must send their children to schools under the control of ministers of another sect. It is true that the Ordinance provides that religious instruction need not be given to children of parents dissenting from the tenets of the sect superintending the school, if they attend, as day scholars only. But, while there is a kind of toleration in this, which no sect or class of people ought in this equality to be put by Government in a position to require, it does not at all obviate the difficulty. For the risk of proselytism would still be nearly as imminent, if it were desired to effect it without this instruction as with it. There are a thousand obvious ways in which an inclination and bias towards the particular sect controlling the school might be communicated to the children attending it. And the communication of this bias or prejudice would be such more irresistible, and more dangerous because much more subtle and unsuspected in its operation, than even the positive inoculation of particular tenets. The better the school the more praiseworthy the master, the greater the danger. Because the affection of the children for the master and regard for the school, would naturally, whenever they came to consider such matters, incline them more favourably to his peculiar prejudices. The effect, would certainly strengthen the conscientious scruples of many parents to sending their children to such schools.

The only conceivable mode of avoiding these difficulties would be, as has been said, the establishment of a school, in each district for every sect. But in rural districts where over the population is small and scattered, as in a new colony, must for a length of time be the case in many parts, and where the variety of religious belief is unusually as great as in more populous districts, this would be literally impracticable.

The present system therefore does not admit of education being made compulsory. Not much has been said it would provide taxation for education; because the benefit produced by the tax would be only partial. This it prevents the adoption of the only or the most effectual means for its diffusion.

Again, were the inherent difficulties overcome, it would still preclude from Government aid all popular schools established by or under the control of laymen.