TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1881.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3121, 29 June 1881, Page 2

TOWN EDITION. The Daily Telegraph WEDNESDAY, JUNE 29, 1881.

The Napier district school committee, at its meeting last night very properly, as we think, refused to allow effect to be given to the permission that was granted by the Education Board to the Bible in Schools Committee in reference to the distribution of circulars for the purpose of testing public opinion in the matter of Scripture reading in the schools. We hope the other district committees will follow the example that has been set them at Napier, and co show the Board that no extension of its authority unwarranted by law will be permitted. The chairman of the Napier committee, who has also a seat on the Board, said the permission to the Bible Committee was only granted as a matter of courtesy. It is a very curious way of showing courtesy to pass a resolution that could not but have a misleading tendency. We think the Bishop of Waiapu has good reason to complain at the treatment he has received. In making his application to the Board the Bishop undoubtedly believed that he was going to the right quarter, and that belief must have been confirmed by the reply that he received from the Board. Had be known that the whole matter rested with the committees he would have doubtless applied to them. There is every excuse to be made for the mistake bo far as the Bible Committee is concerned, but there is no excuse to be offered on behalf of the Board, which knew, or ought to have known, that, in replying as was done to the Bishop, a collision with the committees would be inevitable. By the action taken the Board clearly infringed upon the committee's functions, and the Bible Committee has been placed in a false position. We are the better pleaßed at,the course adopted by the Napier committee, as we notice a growing tendency on the part of the central or distributing Boards of our several public institutions to monopolise power and render unnecessary the existence of the secondary bodies. Thus we have reen the Road Boards wiped out by the County Councils, and Charitable Aid Committees by Hospital Boards. The Education Boards have on several occasions endeavored to usurp the functions of the school committees and resentment of all such conduct cannot be too warmly applauded. A late attempt on the part of the Auckland Board is thus mentioned in a recent telegram : — " The Board of Education having removed Miss Minnie Whyte to the Grafton-road public school without reference to the committee, the latter protested that under the Act they must be consulted, and instructed the beadmaster not to recognise the lady as a teacher at the school." Perhaps the Board gave Miss Whyte the appointment " as a matter of courtesy" in the same way as the Hawke's Bay Board exceeded its powers in its reply to the Bishop of Waiapu. but as a matter of right the committees in both cases asserted their legal standing.