E.—2

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ing members of a community and train them in a way that will make it almost incumbent on them to desert that community must, on occasion of each operation of the kind, leave it somewhat weaker than it would have been if such interference had not taken place. Should this process of selection be repeated frequently it would amount to a contrivance for securing the survival, so far as the particular settlements are concerned, of the more unfit. Probably no surer means could be devised for bringing about the deterioration of the race, with eventual destruction. The view might be stated still more briefly thus: To deprive the Maori settlements of their best members by giving them scholarships and other inducements to forsake their people for good and for all would be one of the cruellest and most certain means that could be adopted for making the race as such deteriorate and die out. It would seem that the only sound and just reason for taking even unusually able young Maoris from their homes for very long periods is a probability, almost amounting to certainty, that these young Maoris will in some sense return to their people, and be not a loss to them but a very great gain. This amounts to saying that no very young Maoris, except those who are of commanding ability and obviously likely to be very useful to their race, should be encouraged to look forward to university careers.* 111. This article may well conclude with an attempt to remove a difficulty which might easily be thought insuperable by any one not very conversant with Maori affairs. People who are quite outside of the Maori circle can hardly understand fully how it is that long-continued residence among Europeans can render a young Maori unfit for getting on with his people if he in any way maintains the ground that he has gained—that is, his real advance ; noticeable as such from the European point of view. It conies about in some such way as this : The young Maori, who has been at boarding-school long enough to cause him to feel that his people are strange, foreign, and somewhat unsatisfactory from his own newer point of view, finds that his view of his people is, after the rejoicings connected with his return are over, or even before in some cases, exactly their view with regard to him and his goings on : they have already found out that their wanderer has returned to them quite spoiled—that is, for any purpose that they could, in their least critical moods, consider useful. Finding him so altered and disfigured from their Maori standpoint, they have come to believe that he is far less industrious than he used to be, and that his fastidiousness about matters of eating and drinking is quite unendurable. They also sometimes find that it is going to cost a small fortune to dress him in the Te Aute or St. Stephen's style. These shortcomings, with numerous others, more or less imaginary in many cases, are chalked up against him, until at last a feeling of something like disgust is found to have sprung up on both sides, and the lot of the returned scholar has come to be no longer a happy one. Sometimes it is found that a fortnight or less suffices to bring this state of matters to maturity. Should the returned student be a girl, the course of things is just about the same, the only difference being that the number of more or less competent critics will probably be greater. This is what always may, and often does, happen in the case of scholars who have been very long at boarding-schools. If, on the other hand, a boy or a girl has been only a short time away—say, a couple of years, or even three —the feeling referred to will wear off, and the family or hapu, including the returned member of it, will soon be at one again, or as much so as large families usually are. In the case of village schools this kind of difficulty hardly ever makes its appearance at all; the family just notice one small difference after another making its appearance in the children they are sending to school, and, as these seem to be generally of a harmless character, each of them is soon forgotten ; but all the time these trifling circumstances are gradually modifying the point of view of the parents, who are quite unaware that this or any other process is going on in connection with themselves. It may be added that any one who is at all in the habit of observing such matters, and whose duty causes him to visit the settlements at regular intervals, can hardly help noticing that such effects have been brought about between one of his visits and another. After all, however, the residence at boarding-school, whether of boy or girl, does great good when it does not last too long ; and I should be sorry if it were taken to be my intention to affirm that a lengthened stay at a boarding-school does nothing but harm. Quite the contrary is the truth ; it does hardly anything that does not deserve to be called unalloyed good, from the European standpoint, so far as the pupils are concerned; but it thoroughly unfits them for residence in a Maori settlement, and so tends to loosen ties that ought to be preserved, unless it seems quite certain that such loosening will bring very obvious advantage to the pupil and the tribe from which he springs. It is certainly not a case in which anything should be left to chance ; the end should be seen from the beginning, for a mistake in the matter is almost sure to be irreparable. Boys or girls who live seven or eight years away from their race, and the home to which they belong, will probably never again be able to adapt themselves to their original surroundings so as to live in them with comfort and credit to themselves. On the other hand, however, it should be carefully remembered that the comfort and welfare of the young Maori on his return from boarding-school depend very largely on his capacity for hard work, and his willingness to exercise that capacity. If it should happen that parents and relatives find that boys have not lost their

* The following co|'V of a minute by Mr. Kirk on this subject gives an explicit statement of his views in his own words: "I think this place is a proper one for the reaffirmation of the principle that we have from the first recognised and acted upon—that we should not remove from the midst of the Maori people for life those that are beat fitted to become intelleotual and moral leaders and reformers. It should be made unmistakably plain that our object is not to enable a considerable number of young Maoris to become literati, or members of such professions as would lead them to quit their people and live among Europeans ; that such a course, leaving the propagation and guidanoe of the race in undue proportion, as it would, to the vicious and the stupid—the former the worse from lack of control, the latter from lack of stimulus and leadership—would be a course most inimical to the true interests of the Maori; that we wish to educate as many as possible of the young people in Europoan ways of thought and life, in the hope that their example and influence in the kainga may result in the elevating of the race."