Many people think that the solution of the Education question remains to be found.  A Royal Commission was appointed last session in South Australia to consider the bearings of the existing system, and in Victoria there is already a strong political party opposed to it.  After such a complete reversal of a policy which was supposed to be so firmly established as Sir John Robertson’s land system, no system in Australia can be said to be finally established if there is any considerable number of sufferers by it.  Most sensible people—­though they are certainly not numerous—­admit that the Catholics are really aggrieved by being obliged to contribute towards a system of education of which they cannot avail themselves, and many others regret the omission from our educational system of so important an element as religion.  But the advantage of an uniform system of State education is widely and generally appreciated.  The present system may be modified so as to give ministers of religion greater opportunities for doctrinal teaching out of hours, and to allow of broad Christian morality being taught as part of the educational course.  But I cannot think that a return to State aid to denominational schools is at all probable; and if the next half-dozen years pass over without such a change, the number of electors educated under the existing system will make it impossible.  The Church of England was the only Protestant body which originally objected to the secular system, because none of the other Protestant denominations had schools of their own.  Now these are beginning to awake to the fact that the secular schools are thinning their flocks, and producing a large number of freethinkers in fact, if not in profession.  They are therefore openly becoming more inclined to joint action with the Anglicans, not for the establishment of denominational schools, but for the introduction of broad Christian teaching into the existing schools.  The Catholics, of course, hold that just as the existing schools negatively produce Free-thinkers by the absence of any Christian teaching, so broad Christianity would be mere Protestantism; i.e., the negation of Roman Catholic doctrine.

On the Land question we seem as far as ever from finality.  The reaction against the selection system will probably not extend to Victoria because the quantity of land there is limited, and its character for the most part superior.  In South Australia the solution will probably be in superior facilities for opening up the interior or unoccupied lands, greater fixity of tenure to the leaseholders, restriction of the land open to the operation of the system of selection, easier terms to the selector, and greater encouragement to both selector and leaseholder to improve their holdings.  In New South Wales the change must be more radical, because, in the absence of the South Australian clause which made survey precede selection, the evil which has arisen is much greater.  But the direction