proud, and under which the State educates
thirteen-fourteenths of the children of the Colony. Now, in 1898, out
of an estimated population of about 780,000 all told, some 150,000 are
at school or college. Of children between ten and fifteen years of
age the proportion unable to read is but o.68. The annual average of
attendance is much higher in New Zealand than in any of the Australian
Colonies. The primary school system is excellent on its literary, not
so excellent on its technical side. Nearly three-fourths of the Roman
Catholic children do not take advantage of it. Their parents prefer to
support the schools of their church, though without State aid of any
kind. These, and a proportion of the children of the wealthier, are
the only exceptions to the general use made of the public schools. It
is not likely that any change, either in the direction of teaching
religion in these, or granting money to church schools, will be made.
Each political party in turn is only too eager to charge the other
with tampering with the National system--a sin, the bare hint of which
is like suspicion of witchcraft or heresy in the Middle Ages.

Grey gained office in 1877, but with a majority too small to enable
him to carry his measures. Ballance, his treasurer, did indeed carry
a tax upon land values. But its chief result at the time was to
alarm and exasperate owners of land, and to league them against the
Radicals, who after a not very brilliant experience of office without
power fell in 1879. Thereafter, so utterly had Grey's angry followers
lost faith in his generalship, that they deposed him--a humiliation
which it could be wished they had seen their way to forego, or he to
forgive. Yet he was, it must be confessed, a very trying leader. His
cloudy eloquence would not do for human nature's daily food. His
opponents, Atkinson and Hall, had not a tithe of his emotional power,
but their facts and figures riddled his fine speeches. Stout and
Ballance, lieutenants of talent and character, became estranged from
him; others of his friends were enough to have damned any government.
The leader of a colonial party must have certain qualities which Sir
George Grey did not possess. He may dispense with eloquence, but must
be a debater; whether able or not able to rouse public meetings,
he must know how to conduct wearisome and complicated business by
discussion; he must not only have a grasp of great principles, but
readiness to devote himsel