[Illustration: SEWING-CLASS IN AN INDUSTRIAL SCHOOL.]
"The whole country is divided into school districts for educational purposes; the education is secular and free, the common branches being taught on the same basis as in the schools of most of the United States. There are high-schools and academies in the cities and larger towns; there are colleges and universities in the principal cities, and there is the University of New Zealand, which is an examining body only, and has the power to confer the same degrees as the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. All things considered, the educational system of the colony seems to be an excellent one, and the people deserve credit for the attention they have given to it.
"We were invited to visit some of the schools in Auckland, and also in Napier and Wellington, and while travelling through the country we have had glimpses of some of the smaller schools. It was very much like visiting similar establishments in New England or New York, the branches of study as well as the form of instruction being practically the same. They tell us there are more than eleven hundred schools of all kinds in the colony, and nearly one hundred thousand scholars attending them. Seventy-three per cent. of the male, and sixty-eight per cent. of the female, population can read and write, and about five per cent. can read only. In the coming generation the proportion will be much greater.
"In another respect New Zealand resembles England in having an enormous public debt in proportion to her population. According to the published figures the debt amounts to £35,000,000, or $175,000,000, which is very nearly $350 for each inhabitant of the colony. The interest charge on this debt is about $13 annually for each inhabitant, so that the tax for this purpose alone is by no means light. And yet the colony seems quite unconcerned about it, and the authorities generally seem to think that there will be no trouble whatever in paying the interest promptly, and also in wiping out the principal in course of time. A sinking fund has been established for the reduction of the debt, and at the last report it exceeded $15,000,000.
"The money has been expended in various public works, especially in the construction of railways, of which there are nearly two thousand miles in both islands, South Island having the greater number. There are a few private lines, principally for the use of coal-mining companies, and not amounting in all to twenty miles; all the others are the property of the Government, and are operated on its account. The profit of operating the railways is about two per cent. of their cost; but the lines are greatly benefiting the country in aiding its development, and will doubtless pay much better before many years.
