Document devoid of sense

There is no good thing in the world so perfect that it may not by misrepresentation be held up as an evil; but it does not follow that because of that misrepresentation the good thing has lost its excellence. Just so it is with our system of education.

It is as admirable today as it ever was; if fostered, as it ought to be, it will continue to produce admirable results; and no true well-wisher of the colony can read, save with a mingled feeling of disappointment and pain, the governor’s message on the subject to the legislative council.

The document is one of the most silly that ever aspired to rank as a state paper, and wherever read it will be regarded as an emanation so utterly devoid of common sense that even the writer would be puzzled to explain the meaning of one-half of its sentences.

Fancy the governor of this “magnificent territory,” with the bright examples of what free education has done and is doing for the advancement of the British provinces and the United States before him, gravely asserting that “in Vancouver Island an attempt has been made to make the education of the youth a burden on the colony,” and adding, upon the authority of his predecessor, that the system has not been successful, and that other objects besides the intellectual advancement of the children were sometimes allowed entrance into the consideration of the board of education.

We deny that the system of education on the Island has been unsuccessful. It has been in the highest degree successful.

The people never felt it a burden, because the expense was borne equally by all classes — the poor man with half a dozen children to educate paid no more than a man without a family. The Daily British Colonist and Victoria Chronicle,

March 2, 1867