pay taxes for the maintenance of Protestant schools whilst supporting in addition the entire burden of their own.
A great stimulus was given at the Government schools by the distribution of prizes twice a year, for the purchase of which an allowance was made of a shilling for each child, according to the average attendance. Also, whatever lines of distinction were drawn elsewhere between the classes of bond and free, none existed within the school walls, where the children of convicts and colonists, attended together, sat upon the same benches, and were treated in all respects alike. There was not any system of diocesan inspection of schools, and that of the Government had no home precedent, the Perth schoolmaster being permanently appointed as inspector of the schools of his fellow-masters, without any regard to the comparative value of his certificate and of theirs.
The amount of education acquired at these Government schools varied somewhat with the efficiency of the instructors who, in a struggling colony, must occasionally be such as it is possible to procure, rather than those really qualified to fill the situation. However, at the time of our arrival at Barladong, we found that the reputation which the climate of West Australia enjoys for checking incipient consumption had attracted thither, two years before, a schoolmaster, whose power of imparting knowledge was equal to that of any person whom we had ever seen at the head of a National school in England.
This painstaking gentleman, being under the impression that the faculties of colonial children could be drawn out by the same means as had proved successful with their English contemporaries, commenced a course of
