pleased to admit corn, the produce of the Australian colonies, on the same footing as Canadian corn.'

This takes us at a bound to the period of the Corn Laws in England; and it is curious to note the spectacle of Robert Lowe in a remote dependency waging war against the Protectionism of Sir Robert Peel, Lord Stanley, and Mr. Gladstone, then President of the Board of Trade. Mr. Lowe was exceedingly severe on these eminent English statesmen for making a difference, in this matter of the duty on corn, between one colony and another.

'In Australia there was a whole population of British origin; the greater part of the Canadian population was alien in language and in blood. We had not yet raised our hands against the mother country; Canada had been recently the scene of rebellion. Canada had never contributed to the welfare of the mother country. Canada had only created expense. This colony, on the other hand, produced an export every year increasing in quantity and becoming more valuable to the mother country by enabling her more successfully to compete in her woollen manufactures with the whole world. If England persisted in this Joseph-and-his-brethren sort of system, she would retain perhaps numerous dependencies, but she would never become the vast united empire which she ought.'

The conclusion of this speech can hardly fail to interest certain leading English statesmen even at the present day.

'Simple, however, as the question might appear to us here, and just, as we might imagine, was the claim we urged, that claim had been discussed in the House of Commons, and had been rejected. On looking over the debate as reported in the papers, he (Mr. Lowe) was surprised at the manner in which Mr. Gladstone had opposed it; he almost blushed at the amount of sacrifice which Mr. Gladstone, the liberality of whose views was so well known, had made to party feeling. . .

6

The interests of the colony were never considered, and the question itself was only discussed with a view to the amount of grain this colony was likely to export in proportion to the amount required by Great Britain..

One of the speakers in the House of Commons, suggested that, however small the effect at first, Australia might export largely after a time and then the interests of the landowners would be affected. This was in truth the only reason; they forgot that we were Englishmen, and claimed to be placed on a general footing with themselves.'

Mr. Lowe was very much in earnest on this question of the duty on Australian corn; and drew up with his own hand a petition to the House of Commons, which I transcribe not only as a curiosity of colonial political literature, but also as an interesting document for the future historians of Canada and Australia :

MR. LOWE'S PARALLEL BETWEEN CANADA AND
NEW SOUTH WALES.

To the Honourable the Commons of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in Parliament assembled: -

The humble petition of the Legislative Council of New South Wales in Council assembled,

Humbly showeth :

That your petitioners have learned with feelings of bitter disappointment that your Honourable House has recently refused to extend to them the privilege accorded to Canada of importing corn and flour at a nominal duty into England. The wool, the staple export of this colony, is exposed to the rivalry of the whole world, and by its competition has been the means of keeping down the price of the raw material of a most important. English manufacture, whereas the heavy duty on Baltic timber, imposed for the protection of Canada, has been felt as a grievous tax on the British householders and shipowners. That your petitioners have contributed nearly a million of money for the coercion of prisoners of the Crown, an object of a purely British character, and upwards of another million to introduce the starving poor of the British Isles into New South Wales as advantageous to the mother country as to the colony, while the

recent rebellion in Canada has cost vast sums to the British Treasury, and been followed by the loan of 1,500,000l. for the use of the colony under a Parliamentary guarantee.

That the Crown Revenue was surrendered to Canada in consideration of a civil list of 75,0007. in a population of a million and a half, whereas a civil list of 81,600l. has been imposed on a population of 170,000, and the revenues are not only not surrendered, but are threatened to be increased, by a strain of the royal prerogative, to treble the present amount.

That Canada enjoys the responsible government, while the Colonial Office will not even suspend its decisions to give your petitioners a hearing.

That the contiguity of Canada to the corn-growing States of America affords great facility for smuggling grain, which the isolated position of Australia renders impracticable.

That this is a settled, Canada a conquered colony. That the population of one is British; of the other, to a great extent, French. That the laws and manners of England prevail in the one, and those of France in a great part of the other; and that in none of these points are your petitioners conscious of any inferiority to the Canadians.

That the quantity of corn which your petitioners would be likely

to import, though of immense consequence to them, would be utterly insignificant to so large a market as that of the United Kingdom. That if the agriculturists of England are sensitive as to the admission of foreign corn, the constituents of your petitioners also have their sensibilities, and great as is the loss which they incur by exclusion from your markets, they feel yet more keenly the ignominious badge of inferiority which the decision of your Honourable House has affixed to them. Your petitioners therefore humbly pray, that your Honourable House will admit wheat, maize, and flour the produce of Australia, into the United Kingdom on the same terms as wheat and flour the produce of Canada.

Robert Lowe had already taken the first step towards making practically his own the great question of public education in Australia. Still as a Crown nominee, but exercising, as he did throughout, the greatest possible independence of action, he moved for a select committee to inquire into and report upon the state of education in the colony.

The select committee was duly appointed, and as its labours have been productive of results of far-reaching and

historical importance, the names of its members should be given. As the question of education is so intimately mixed up with that of religion, it may be as well to show how the various religious denominations were represented on what was known as Mr. Robert Lowe's Select Committee. Of the ten members, five belonged to the Church of England, viz.— Robert Lowe, Charles Cowper, Richard Windeyer, Dr. Nicholson, and Deas Thomson; two to the Church of Rome : J. H. Plunkett, the Attorney General, and Roger Therry; two to the Church of Scotland: Sir Thomas Mitchell and Dr. Lang; and one to the Society of Friends: Joseph Phelps Robinson. Mr. Lowe himself acted as Chairman and was, in a very especial sense, the life and soul of the entire committee. The report of this committee, upon which the educational systems of the various colonies have in the main been based, is here given in the Appendix. We are now nearing the close of Robert Lowe's career as a Crown nominee in the Legislative Council of New South Wales.

APPENDIX TO CHAPTER XIII

REPORT OF ROBERT LOWE'S COMMITTEE ON PUBLIC EDUCATION Extract from the Votes and Proceedings of the Legislative Council, No. 17

(Friday, June 21, 1844)

6. Education:-Mr. Lowe, pursuant to notice, moved that a Select Committee be appointed to enquire into, and report upon, the State of Education in this Colony, and to devise the means of placing the education of youth upon a basis suited to the wants and wishes of this community.

Question put and passed, and the following Committee appointed accordingly:

List of Witnesses Examined

James Robert Wilshire, Esq.
George Allen, Esq.

Rev. Ralph Mansfield
Henry Macdermott, Esq.
William Augustine Duncan, Esq.
Rev. James Fullerton, LL.D.
Rev. Robert Allwood, B.A.
Mr. Edward M'Roberts

The Most Rev. John Bede Polding,
D.D., Roman Catholic Arch-
bishop

William Timothy Cape, Esq.

Mr. Peter Steel

Mr. James Cosgrove

Mr. Bartholomew Peter Scannell
Mr. John Hunter Baillie

The Lord Bishop of Australia
The Rev. John Saunders
The Rev. Robert Ross
Mr. Peter Robertson
The Rev. John M'Kenny
Charles Kemp, Esq.
William Macarthur, Esq.

The Select Committee of the Legislative Council appointed on the 21st June, 1844, to enquire into and report upon the State of Education in this Colony, and to devise the means of placing the education of youth upon a basis suited to the wants and wishes of the community, have agreed to the following report.

Your Committee have examined a number of witnesses embodying every shade of religious opinion, and have thus, they believe, brought the question of education, with all its attendant difficulties, fully and fairly before the Council. The present state of education in this colony your Committee consider extremely deficient. There are about 25,676 children between the ages of four and fourteen years; of these only 7,642 receive instruction in public schools, and 4,865 in private ones, leaving about 13,000 children, who, as far as your Committee know, are receiving no education at all. The expense of public education is about 17. per head; an enormous rate after every allowance has been made for the necessary dispersion of the inhabitants of a pastoral country, and the consequent dearness of instruction. While your Committee admit that this deficient state of education is partly attributable to the ignorance, dissolute habits, and avarice of too many of the parents, and partly to the wants of good schoolmasters and school books, they feel bound to cxpress their conviction that a far greater portion of the evil has arisen from the strictly denominational character of the public schools. Many of these schools have indeed attained a considerable degree of excellence under the management and inspection of the clergy, and it would be most unjust to charge upon them those defects in the state of public education which your Committee believe are the natural result of the plan by which that education has been regulated.

The first great objection to the denominational system is its expense; the number of schools in a given locality ought to depend on the number of children requiring instruction which that locality contains. To admit any other principle is to depart from those maxims of wholesome economy upon which public money should always be administered.