The Globe. WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1877.

Globe, Volume VIII, Issue 944, 4 July 1877, Page 2

The Globe. WEDNESDAY, JULY 4, 1877.

The Finance Committee of the City Council have arranged with the manager of the Bank of New Zealand for the future conduct of the banking business of the Council, and the arrangement has been confirmed. Further opposition is now, of course, useless. We regret that the Council should have seen fit to take the course they have done. The terms offered by the Bank of New Zealand are no doubt liberal —perhaps as liberal as if the account had been put up to tender. But that is not the question. We contended before —and we still hold to the opinion—that it is the duty of the Council to put their financial business up to tender, as they would do with any other large work. For the Committee to arrange for the banking account of the city in the manner in which they have done, is as wrong in principle, as for the Council to apply to some contractor for an estimate of a large work, and arrange with him for its execution, to the exclusion of all others. In the case under discussion the Municipal Corporations Act does not, we suppose, interfere, but we cannot help regarding the course taken by the Council as an infringment of its spirit. We have indeed been informed, that apart from the terms offered by the Bank, there is another reason for giving the Bank of New Zealand the business of the Council. It has something to do with the payment of the interest on the city debentures; but as no reference is made to this point in the report of the sub-committee, we must conclude that it is of very minor importance. Had it been of the weight we are given to understand it is, some reference should have been made to it in the report. Councillors must remember that they are but the representatives of the ratepayers, and that it is their duty to make the public acquainted with the causes which influence their conduct. The only reason assigned in the report for the course they have taken is the unusually liberal terms offered by the Bank of New Zealand. But, as we have said before, this is not a satisfactory answer. Cr. Hobbs says he admires free-trade in banking. He should remember that the public not only admire the principle, but they like to see it carried out; and, judging from his remarks, that gentleman must have a very confused notion of what it really is. At the same time we are bound to admit that, considering the terms granted by the Bank, we do not think the city has lost anything by the course adopted by the finance coincommittee.

Iff a former article we dealt with the claims of the Grammar School to supply the place of a secondary school, and the conclusion we arrived at was, to use the apt words of a correspondent of one of our morning contemporaries, that ££ its costliness is a serious objection; its sectarianism a fatal one.” We cannot leave the subject, however, without referring to the tone adopted by the friends of the Grammar School throughout the discussion carried on in the columns of our morning contemporary. Their scarcely concealed contempt for institutions conducted by the Government is surely very much out of place, when wo remember the position of the Grammar School itself. Not only is that institution liberally endowed, but it, in times past, received considerable annual grants from the Provincial Council. Its governing body have no objection to £ ‘ State charity” so long as it is exercised for their benefit. Even at the present time, there is an application from them before the General Government for a grant in aid out of the public funds.