A REPLY.
To the Editor. Sir, —I am glad that my letter in your i issue of Tuesday has afforded an opportunity j for Mr Stout to inform the citiz ns of . Dunedin of his generous and public-spirited | ott';r to “act as Secretary to the Dunedin j School Committee, without salary.” The fact had, ior the moment, escaped my memory, or I would have mentioned it, and thus have spared Mr Stout the necessity of proclaiming his own good deeds. But the fact stated by Mr Stout, does not in any way touch the case as between myself and the Times. Mr Stout has not, I think, acted with his usual regard to fair-play in his letter of this morning. He begins to quote my letter a sentence too far down. I put the case thus “ The question raised by the artic e in the Times is not whether, or no, the Secretary was overpaid, nor whether, or no, he efficiently discharged the dudes required of him ; but whether, or no, the Committee had any right to engage the services of a Secretary, either one of their own members or an outsider, and to pay his salary out of the school funds.” Then follows the statement quoted by Mr Stout, and which statement I again make, assured that it- cannot be disputed. Mr Stout has never, either in public or in private, made the charges against the Committee which are set forth in the columns of the Times. True it is that Mr fStdut took the action detailed by him in the letter published by you to-day. He disputed the necessity for, not the right of the Committee to appoint and pay a salaried Secretary, and also cqiuplaimd of the manner in which the duties of Secretary were discharged by Mr Hardy, a course he or any ratepayer had a perfectly good right to take. He was public spirited enough to offer to do the work for nothing. Mr Stout made that offer, in writing, to the Committee after their appointment iu 1869, bat the Committee, most of whom had several years’ experience of the working of the school business, unanimously declined tq accept the offer j Mr Hatdy being re-appointe4, if my memory is correct, on the motion of the very man —Mr |*-eter Sherwin, senr. —who was returned op the Committee in opposition to Mr Hardy. Even now, Mr Stout endorses every word of my letter, by informing us that, in Committee, he (Mr Stout) “moved that the Secretary’s salary be If a §aDry be voted at all, it then becomes a matter of opinion as to how much that salary should be, a point on which there is room for even wise men to differ, and to form an intelligent opinion, in respect to which requires some little knowledge and experience of what the work to he done is, and the time, care, tact, and judgment necessary to its performance. It, however, yet remains to be seen whether or not the reduction of the Secretary’s salary will be a saving of fifty pence, not to say LSO. Just one word more. Mr Stout, while endeavoring to trip me up, has missed me entirely, and put his foot in the way of the writer in the Times, whose article I was reviewing. That writer said, “Those who ought to take an interest in the matter, have been in happy ignorance of the fact that the School Committee of Dunedin have been in the habit of paying one of their members to do their work lor them, while Mr Stout shows that this very question has been warmly discussed at every annual meeting of ratepayers since 1869. I should like to say something as to tbe nonelection of Mr Hardy, in 18- 9 j but rt has no
direct bearing on the question, raised in the Times article, nour in dispute between Mr Stout and myself.—l am, &c., One who has been on the Committee. Dunedin, February sth, 1873.
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Evening Star, Issue 3109, 5 February 1873, Page 2
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670A REPLY. Evening Star, Issue 3109, 5 February 1873, Page 2
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