The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1881.

Kumara Times, Issue 1421, 22 April 1881, Page 2

The Kumara Times. Published Every Evening. FRIDAY, APRIL 22, 1881.

The public meeting convened by his Worship the Mayor and to be held in the Town Hall this evening to consider the new scale of fees to be charged by the Westland School Commissioners upon miners upon the Education Reserve will doubtless be well attended, as the question at issue is an important one to every one residing in the district j but we presume that the matters to be discussed on the occasion will have a larger scope than what is included in the exact words of the requisition. In saying this, we wish it to be understood that as all classes are equally concerned, so there must be united action to bring the Hokitika magnates to a sense of the responsibilities which lie upon them, and of the deplorable effects which will inevitably follow the cruel and unjust course they are pursuing. We have stated recently that beyond all question

the new regulations are calculated to to drive miners away from the Reserve by the higli rate of charges proposed to be imposed, and there is no doubt but that a “special miners right” for the Reserve is clearly illegal. But going outside of the law is nothing to the Commissioners, as the following instance will demonstrate. It was long since decided that the proceeds arising from the greater part of the Reserve, which is yielding revenue, should be devoted to the purposes of secondary education, but it is a fact which no one can deny, that every penny of the revenue has been expended in primary education, except, perhaps, such sums as have been paid to the Secretary, or expended under what are probably called “contingencies,” When men holding an important trust are so utterly reckless in their proceedings, it follows necessarily that they will not take much pains to consider the interests of those persons whom chance has for the time placed at their mercy. We do not know whether up to the present time any concerted action has been taken as to any resolutions to be proposed at the meeting this evening, but if some floating rumors are to be received as an approximation to the truth, there will he some pretty plain speaking, and, in truth, it is quite time that the air of submission which has been exhibited by the residents on the Reserve, should be changed for a widely different attitude. The only reasonable course which appears to be open to the people of Kumara, is to make a direct appeal to his Excellency the Governor, who can by a stroke of his pen remove from office the individuals with whom the tenants on the Reserve have so long carried on an unequal contest.