EMPIRE AND EDUCATION. BY THE HEAD MASTER OF HARROW. THERE is a very admirable paper-which might be circulated throughout the length and breadth of the British Empire with advantage-in the Journal of the Royal Colonial Institute for June. It is a paper which the Rev. J. C. Welldon read before the Royal Colonial Institute on the "Imperial Aspects of Education." It is an admirable paper, and one which Mr. Cecil Rhodes, for instance, might do well to print by the million, or to submit as an examination paper to all the schools which he can influence in South Africa and elsewhere. Mr. Welldon begins by pointing out that the reign of Queen Elizabeth was the beginning, while that of Queen Victoria is the consummation, of the British Empire. Mr. Welldon says that it is only when great deeds are done that great thoughts are possible. But it is probably just as true that no great deeds are done when men do not have great thoughts. The question as to which comes first is not solved by a reference to Milton, Shakespeare, or Byron.

WHAT IS EDUCATION?

Mr. Welldon then proceeds to discuss the relations of the public schools of England to the fortunes of the British Empire. He maintains that whatever are the faults of the public schools, they have such a hold upon the affections and the interests of the English people that no criticism seems to be able to injure their prosperity. The sentiment of an English public schoolman for his school is unfelt and unimagined elsewhere. This is all the more remarkable, because the public schools which have inspired the most affection have by no means always been those of the highest culture and the greatest delicacy. It would be well, said the Head Master of Harrow, if the schoolmasters of the future took a wider view of education, and remembered that it is not so much the lessons learned in class that constitute education as the habits formed in a great and generous community. "What is the education of the generality of the world?" exclaims Burke. "Reading a parcel of books? No! Restraint and discipline, emulation and examples of virtue and of justice form the education of the world." The true ideal of education is not the passing of examinations and the gaining of marks:

It is large and spacious and profound. It is, in Milton's stately phrase, so to train his pupils that they may "perform justly, skilfully, and magnanimously all the offices, both private and public, of peace and war." That is "a compleat and generous education," that and nothing less. Speaking in my own name (for I have no right to speak for others), I do not care to turn out scholars and mathematicians, or, indeed, I do care, but I care far more to turn out governors, administrators, generals, philanthropists, statesmen.

THE FIVE IMPERIAL QUALITIES.

English schools and universities may not turn out scholars, but they have sent forth men of vigour, courage, and integrity, men brave, chivalrous, and true, and to continue the supply and the breed of such men is the service which the educator of to-day can render to his country. What are the qualities of Englishmen, he then asks, which have enabled us not only to win, but to retain our Empire and to go on extending it from year to year. Of these qualities he mentions five. First, physical strength; secondly, promptitude; thirdly, selfreliance; fourthly, character; fifthly, religion. He maintains that England owes her Empire far more to her sports than to her studies:

It is not long since I was at Harrow, looking on at a football match, and a lady said to me, "What do you think of this,

Mr. Welldon?" I said, "It is to this that we owe the British Empire." Englishmen are not superior to Frenchmen or Germaus in brains or industry or the science and apparatus of war; but they are superior in the health and temper which games impart. For it is not the physical value of athletic games that is the highest. The pluck, the energy, the perseverance, the good temper, the self-control, the discipline, the co-operation, the esprit de corps, which merit success in cricket or football, are the very qualities which win the day in peace or war. The men who possessed these qualities, not sedate and faultless citizens, but men of will, spirit and chivalry, are the men who conquered at Plassy and Quebec. In the history of the British Empire it is written that England has owed her sovereignty to her sports.

But above athletic vigour stands the quality of which Englishmen, and especially English public school men, stand pre-eminent. I will call it readiness. It can indeed be scarcely defined in a single word. It means courage, it means selfreliance, it means the power of seizing opportunities, it means resource. But whatever it is, it is characteristic of the English race. I remember asking the most distinguished of living travellers what he had found to be the secret of success in life, and his answering that it was not so much intellectual ability as promptitude in taking advantage of opportunities. That is, I believe, the hereditary gift of Englishmen. It is fostered by the English public schools.

The latent reserve power of the English race, says Dr. Welldon

is not in the few men whose names are familiar as household words; it is the far greater number of men who, if they were called upon to face an emergency, would face it successfully, that the strength of England consists.

THE IMPORTANCE OF CHARACTER AND RELIGION.

In a striking passage he runs over some of the men who have made the Empire, "who had faith in England and in themselves, and who needed no other faith, except in God"-a rather important exception, no doubt. Mr. Welldon gives a high place to Mr. Rhodes, whose actions, he says, do not need defence. A great career is not free from shadows; they only throw up its brilliancy. But Mr. Welldon is not in the least disposed to underestimate the value of the supreme ruling quality of Englishmen-their character. They owe their position more to their morals than to their arms. He says:

One last lesson there is which the study of the British Empire suggests, and the student of Imperial politics will enforce upon his pupils. It is the lesson of Imperial unity.

The Empire is one. The English-speaking world is one. Amidst a thousand differences of place, climate, resources, life, culture, religion, and politics, it is in essential tone and character one. The men who founded it, the men who upheld it, have been animated by the same spirit, and have aspired to the same exalted aim. In the large life of the British Empire questions of domestic policy, however important in themselves, decline and vanish.

The fourth secret of empire he dismisses briefly. He admits that the religious character of Englishmen has been stained at various times by grievous faults, but deep down in their hearts has been the fear of God. "I believe it has been the secret of their success." Mr. Welldon believes in Providence much as John Milton did, because its nearest counterpart in the world is the English-speaking race. He says:

I believe in my heart that the best thing which can happen to the uncivilised peoples of the world is that they should come more and more under the influence of Great Britain. It is much to say, but it is not more than Milton said when he used the proud words, "When God is decreeing to begin some new and great period in His church, even to the reforming of the Reformation itself, what does He then but reveal Himself to His servants, and, as His manner is, first to His Englishmen!"

DEMOCRACY AND HISTORY.

Therefore it follows from all this that the duty of the teacher is to bring before the pupil habitually the magnitude and dignity of the British Empire; to strengthen the sympathies of race, language, and religion, to promote foreign travel, by which alone English men can learn to appreciate the full strength and glory of the British Empire. The schoolmaster must also fashion and promote a spirit of confidence in democracy, and seek by all means its defence in culture and information, which are the best assurance that its sympathies will lie on the side of honour and generosity. In the discussion which followed Mr. Parkin quoted a saying of Cecil Rhodes', which I do not remember to have seen in print before. I reproduce it here in the hope that it may touch the consciences of some of those who are responsible for the damnation in question:

It was once mentioned to him, I am told, that one of the great colonies of the Empire had given up the study of British history on account of questions arising in local politics. His remark was that "it was enough to damn the soul of any colony." I ask you to carry home the thought which lies behind that expression. Any colony which allows itself, collectively or individually, to break the link of those great national traditions which they possess as a right, is losing the greatest power and stimulus and means of elevating itself that any young community ever possessed.

A WORD FROM LORD LORNE.

In the North American Review of June, the Marquis of Lorne, discoursing pleasantly concerning Canadian questions, makes a reference to the subject touched upon by Cecil Rhodes. Lord Lorne says:—

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There is little doubt that were it not for the school books which teach young America that Britain was a tyrant, we might have the wider Union to embrace America. Once old Lord Lindsay, himself a noted historian, was dilating to Lord Overton on the use of historical knowledge. "History!" said Lord Overton. What is the use of history, Lindsay? It only keeps people apart by reviving recollections of enmity." I have often thought of how much truth there is in this. But if the great financier, Lord Overton, said this with some truth, could we not teach our boys another kind of history? Could we not make each school, through its history books, a means of showing how our race can be kept together by united finance arrangements? Could we not make boys see that strength is not gained by recollections of Old World and antique oppression, but that by arbitration, conciliation, and conferences, means may be found to write a new history of English-speaking people's advance, along roads which shall be illuminated by hope in the future, instead of darkened by the forgettable enmities of the past?

Wanted: Sailor Boys.

IN Cassell's Family Magazine there is an article discussing whether or not boys will go to sea after the fashion of boys in the olden times. The writer replies in the negative. Boys don't go to sea because no one will take them. It takes three boys to do one man's work, and as each boy eats as much as one man, boys are naturally at a discount with economical skippers:

To sum up, then, we find from statistics, from observation, and from the testimony of gentlemen engaged in the Mercantile Marine, that boys do not enter the Merchant Service in adequate numbers-adequate, that is, to the demands for able seamen; and that the reason for this is the lack of opportunity, for owners will not carry boys. But what is wanted, before the tradition of going a-sailoring dies out among British lads, is a revival of the apprenticeship system in some suitable and efficient form, or the substitution of some plan (such as an extension of the training-ship system) answering to the technical schools and engineering shops on shore, by which boys can learn the rudiments of their craft.

AUSTRALIAN FEDERATION.

ITS PROGRESS AND PROSPECTS.

MR. EDWARD SALMON in the Fortnightly Review, writing on this subject, laments bitterly the delay that has taken place in the federation of the Australasian colonies. He points out the advantages that would result from such federation, and says:

Why is it that with such palpable boons, immediate and prospective, awaiting them when they shall enter into a state of federalism, the Australian colonies have not long since linked their fortunes in indissoluble bonds? The reasons are many. First, the unwillingness of certain leading politicians to surrender privileges which their colonies cannot possibly retain under a federal system. Second, the ambitions and jealousies of public men, who should be the first to sink personal aspirations for the sake of a great cause. Third, the exaggerated importance of tariff arrangements. A few years ago nothing was regarded as more difficult than to induce New South Wales to give up her Free Trade in the interest of federation. New South Wales abandoned Free Trade; but the cause of Federation was not advanced by her reversion to Protection. Fourth, the indifference, and even the hostility, of numerous officials who have reason to fear that federation would render imperative changes which would not redound to their personal advantage. The present parliaments would become more provincial, and would probably be reduced in size, and the overgrown civil services of the colonies would probably also be more or less drastically dealt with. Fifth, and in some ways most important of all, the lack of spontaneous enthusiasm on the part of the Australian people, due in no small degree to the confusion wrought by the contentions of leading public men.

The truth is, Australian federation has been delayed too long, and though it must come some day, if not in peace, then under the shadow of the sword, when independence itself is the stake, it cannot be too fully recognised that every year the difficulties increase. Without federation she cannot realise either Wentworth's ideal of "A new Britain in another world," or Sir Henry Parkes' of "One People one Destiny." Only by federation can she further the cause of British unity which, in its turn, means so much to the cause of civilisation.

Mr. Salmon finishes the paper by making the following suggestion:

A report recently appeared in the Australian press that Lord Brassey, the new Governor of Victoria, had written to friends in the colony to tell them that he would probably not remain in Australia more than two years, during which time he hoped to have the privilege of receiving their Royal Highnesses at Government House, Melbourne. Why should not an intimation be conveyed to the colonies that when they federate, the Duke and Duchess will go to Australia, not merely on a visit of pleasure, but to open the first Federal Parliament in the name of the Sovereign?

A Tall Order.

THE Homiletic Review for June is chiefly noticeable for the peremptory demand from Dr. Daniel Gregory with which it opens,-that Christendom should proceed instanter to the evangelisation of the entire world. All barriers being removed, and Christian nations being in possession of science, wealth, power, "God calls upon the Church and the ministry to complete the conquest of the world for Christ-not one, five, ten, twenty generations hence, but absolutely now, in this present generation." The immediate corollary to this conviction is that "the supreme need of the hour next to the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, is that the Church should be set right in her theory of giving."

A REPORT BY ITS COLONIAL TREASURER. THE Hon. J. G. Ward addressed a special meeting of the Royal Geographical Society on New Zealand in 1895. This paper, with the discussion which followed, is published in the June number of the Journal, and very good reading it is. Mr. Ward's paper gives us a brief compendium of the facts and figures concerning the present position of New Zealand. It is so much condensed that it is impossible to summarise it, but a few of the salient facts may be picked out with advantage.

SOME FACTS AND FIGURES.

It is only fifty-five years since the sovereignty of the Queen was proclaimed over the island of New Zealand, and cannibal feasts were held within a short distance of the site of what is now an important city. To-day it is inhabited by 728,000 persons, of whom all but 50,000 are whites. It is crossed from end to end with railways and telegraphs, and the income of its population is over 27 millions a year, half of which comes from farms and mines. There are eighteen millions of money on deposit in the colonies, and the value of manufactures produced in the year amounts to nine millions sterling. New Zealand has 1,200 churches and chapels; 77 per cent. of the population can read and write. In the consumption of drink New Zealand is the eleventh in the list, coming after Switzerland, and the sixteenth in the consumption of tobacco, coming after France. In the last fifty years gold to the value of 49 millions has been sent out of the country. The average total wealth at the end of 1894 was estimated at 150 millions; the public debts at 40 millions, of which 15 millions were spent in railways, and 3 per cent. in the interest. The wealth of the United Kingdom is £247 per head, and that of New Zealand comes next, with £232. Such a record is one of which Mr. Ward and New Zealanders may well be proud.

WOMAN SUFFRAGE.

Then passing on from realised progress, Mr. Ward proceeds to give some information on the social legislation that is so much in favour with the party in power. Mr. Ward says that woman suffrage has worked very well. The women exercised their judgment independently, and their presence at the polling booths did more than anything else to make the election go off smoothly and respectably.

You may depend upon it that men who do anything very bad will not be returned if the women, at any rate, can keep them out. I do not say there would be excessive fastidiousness applied in this direction; but they would exercise ordinary intelligence, and see that good men were elected.

LABOUR LAWS.

Mr. Ward speaks highly also of the machinery provided by the Arbitration Law, which gives statutory powers to a council to settle trade disputes. This council consists of three members-one appointed by the trades unions, one by the employers of labour, and the third is nominated by the Governor and Council of the colony. This council of three is provided by the Governor with a judge of the Supreme Court as president. Mr. Ward thinks that if the provisions which make it mandatory on the part of those who have serious grievances to bring them before this court had existed in England, the boot strike in Northampton would never have taken place. Their factory laws, he thinks, are good and useful.

Mr. Ward does not profess to believe in all the social legislation of New Zealand, but on the whole he thinks that it was inspired by a desire to prevent abuse and to make the position of the people better and happier than it was in former times.

GRADUATED TAXATION.

In taxation, for instance, the principle has been adopted of gradation, based on the cardinal doctrine that people should pay according to their means. The system was purposely framed so as to break up the large tracts of country held in idleness, for the New Zealanders believe that close settlement is essential to prosperity, and therefore they tax land speculators who hold enormous tracts of land merely in order to gamble for a rise in land values, in such a way as to compel them to cut them up. The following is Mr. Ward's explanation of the way in which this is done :

The amount raised under this system is £350,000; it is divided into land tax and income tax, and there are many who confound the two systems, which are as distinct as possible. It is provided that all improvements are exempt, so far as land is concerned, from this system of taxation; and the produce of land is exempt from the income tax. The effect has been to relieve those who are producers from having their efforts to produce from the soil taxed, and the way in which this has worked out is as follows: there are 94,000 land holders in the colony, and only 12,000 pay land tax. Those who say the system is unfair argue that the taxation should be spread over the whole 94,000; but they overlook the fact that, while the taxation of the colony touches the 12,000, the great majority of the others pay under the income tax system. This is a material point, on which there has been a good deal of misunderstanding. As a matter of fact, I am prepared to admit that there are strong arguments used by those who oppose the system; but there are equally strong, and, to my mind, more convincing, arguments in favour of the system. The desire in the colony is to have our land settled, and not, as was the case formerly, have many hundreds of thousands of acres lying idle.

NO CONFISCATION.

This system was originally brought into operation with the primary idea of making the land contribute its fair quota of taxation. When I tell you that the Customs revenue amounts to £1,600,000, and the total amount of revenue derived from land and income tax in the colony is under £380,000, you will see that, even in the aggregate, the taxation under this head is not by any means such a heavy burden as is sometimes represented. At any rate, I wish to tell you this: the Ministry of the country have never said to any man that he must hand over his estate at a particular price to the Government. The idea does exist in the minds of some people that under pressure or force this can be done by the Government. I tell you in this nineteenth century no Government in our country could attempt to do such a thing. If they attempted to force people to hand over what belongs to them against their better judgment, and at prices not satisfactory to them, no Government would be able to continue in office in New Zealand, democratic as it is said to be, for very long.

Mr. Ward concludes his paper with a congratulatory reference to the success with which New Zealand surmounted the recent financial crisis. Replying to a question from the Bishop of Salisbury, Mr. Ward said:

I would like to set the bishop right about the Land for Settlement Act. I did not say that under the Act land could not be taken. The statements have been made that the Government were disposed to force property from people whether they liked it or not. That never has been done in the country, and I think it never will be done. I would remind you that under the law the Government have no say as to the valuation of the land taken, the owner of the land having in the first place the right of fixing the value, and in the event of dispute independent valuers are called in.

IS ENGLAND BANKRUPT ?

NOT YET, UNLESS THERE IS a War.

THE other day the Spectator, in a very remarkable article entitled "Consols at 106," quoted with enthusiasm the authority of the Economist to prove that if the Chancellor of the Exchequer wanted a sum of money suddenly he could raise two hundred millions without imposing a single tax by simply suspending the payment of the interest on the debt. The Spectator also pointed out that by putting a penny on the income tax and dropping the sugar duty he could raise three thousand millions more. It would be difficult to conceive a statement more likely to upset the equanimity of the champion financial pessimist of the age, and accordingly, in the Investors' Review for July, Mr. A. J. Wilson devotes the first place to a scathing analysis of what he calls the sugared wealth dream of the Spectator. The gist of what Mr. Wilson has to say is to be found in the following extracts:

The truth of the matter is that we have no reserves of wealth worth speaking of in this country. All our spare means is either invested in securities, is the expression of mortgages, or of capital employed in industry, or our banks have absorbed it and turned it into "deposits" and credits lent on the market; and if the thing deposited or pledged is -only esteemed of value, or is marketable, it does not matter to the money market what its intrinsic worth may be. And because we have all our wealth directly or vicariously out at interest, or mortgaged, or in trade, because the credits of the banker are only in the main the expression of the debts incurred by one part of the community, or one part of the world, to another, it follows that the entire product has not only no relation to actual wealth, but may in many instances represent the destruction of that wealth at an accelerated pace. The wealth may be consumed, as in the exhaustion of our minerals, or irrecoverably spent upon buildings, “public works," jewels, or riotous living, but as long as the credits originally created upon securities taken to represent it can be kept afloat in the markets of the world, we are not conscious of the loss. On the contrary, we see a continual increase in the appearances of wealth which abundant creations of new securities, rapid advances in the prices of old ones, or the steady expansion of bank and private investments and advances produce. Scotland, gauged by her bank deposits, does not look any the poorer because of her losses abroad, because these losses formed little part of these deposits, save to the small extent the securities the people held to represent former home deposits placed abroad might have been pledged, and because prices of home stocks have risen so much in the interval. The Scottish credit fabric was not breached by these losses causing a wholesale writingoff of exhausted credits, and so long as it could be kept whole, deposits could not but grow by the law of their being. Every bank or other company dividend augments for a time the supply of credit in the market, and ipso tanto the total of the deposits. Every new colonial or foreign loan, raised to pay interest on the old, does the same thing; and the steady endeavour of all banks to find a use to the last shilling, for every increas in their apparent means, encourages the pawning of these stocks, and maintains or raises their price. They live to lend, and must lend to live, and the more they lend the more their deposits multiply. Thus the nation grows richer and richer by the debts it nourishes or contracts. All the while these debts may be no better than accommodation bills.

If it be true that Mr. Chamberlain has taken office with the back thought in his mind of using his position in the Cabinet to get us into a war with France it is to be hoped that he will read this article and ponder on what may be some of the financial consequences of an indulgence in his bellicose aspirations. Mr. Wilson stoutly asserts that we cannot go to war without bursting up the Empire:—

How foolish, in the light of considerations like these, is the statement that by merely suspending the sinking fund—i.e. stopping the pressure the terminable annuities and other debtextinguishing burdens exercise upon prices-the Government of this country could add £200,000,000 to the National Debt. The moment such a strain as a large war implies is put upon us, it is probable that most of the wealth we now plume ourselves upon will be discovered to have been eaten and drunk, or otherwise in wantonness consumed, with only dishonoured bills to show for it. Banking wealth, at least, will probably shrink up like the carbons of an incandescent electric lamp when the air is permitted to come in contact with them. Our next great war is almost certain to be the death-knell of "Empire," boast the featherheads, the poets of the nation's glories, and the sentimentalists of all types never so loudly.

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THE WEALTH OF THE UNITED STATES.

SOME CONCLUSIONS BY MR. MULHALL.

MR. MULHALL, the well-known statistician, spreads himself at some length in the North American Review for June, demonstrating how the United States of America whip creation. He says:

If we take a survey of mankind in ancient or modern times as regards the physical, mechanical and intellectual force of nations, we find nothing to compare with the United States in this present year of 1895. It may be fearlessly asserted that, in the history of the human race, no nation ever before possessed 41,000,000 instructed citizens.

He piles one statistical table upon another, and shows that not only are Americans more generally educated than any other nation, and less subjected to the exactions of militarism, but they are the most energetic and the wealthiest people in the world. He produces figures to prove that

the United States possess almost as much energy as Great Britain, Germany and France collectively, and that the ratio falling to each American is more than what two Frenchmen or Germans have at their disposal.

By the use of machinery they are able to produce far more food than is possible with the agriculturists of the old world.

The census of 1890 showed that the United States had 4,565,000 farmers, the aggregate value of whose farms, cattle and implements summed up 15,982 millions of dollars, giving to each an average fortune of $3,505, most of these men having begun on a capital of a couple of hundred dollars. The number of new farms created since 1860 has been 2,520,000, bringing into cultivation 195,000,000 acres, and the greater part of this work has been done by European settlers.

An ordinary farm-hand in the United States raises as much grain as three in England, four in France, five in Germany, or six in Austria, which shows what an enormous waste of labour occurs in Europe, because farmers are not possessed of the same mechanical appliances as in the United States.

As the result of these appliances, four American farmers

can produce and deliver to the bakers as much flour as will feed a thousand persons, at twelve ounces of bread daily, for a whole year. In other words, one man can feed two hundred and fifty, whereas in Europe one man feeds only thirty persons.

This being the case, it is not surprising that-American wealth exceeds that of Great Britain by thirty-five per cent., but the ratio per inhabitant is less. The following table shows approximately the average of wealth to population in various countries:

DOLLARS PER HEAD. United States..... 1,039 Holland......... 1,080 Swelen.... Great Britain..... 1,260 Belgium 840 Italy France........... 1,130 Germany 730 Austria..

The accumulation of wealth averages $7,000,000 daily.

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