Page:Australia and the Empire.djvu/195

Although the constituencies have supported this system of "free, secular, and compulsory" education everywhere in Australia by decisive majorities, the battle still rages, and a determined opposition, mainly by the Roman Catholic clergy, is kept up, against the Education Act. It is significant, however, that the bulk of their flocks show very little, if any, real hostility to the system. I have recently felt it my duty to read almost a roomful of controversial writings on this education question in Australia. By far the most intelligent advocate I have met of the Roman Catholic demands for a separate public grant for their schools is Mr. Charles Fairfield, who puts the issues with great clearness, from his standpoint, in an essay entitled "Those Catholic Claims" (Melbourne Review, Jan. 1885). When confronted with the low standard of general education displayed in all countries where his co-religionists have had the matter entirely in their own hands, Mr. Fairfield, with engaging frankness, confesses that if asked, "What sort of workmanship do Catholics turn out in countries such as Spain, where they have still very much their own way in educational matters, or in Italy, where they formerly had?" his plain answer