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Patea Mail, Volume I, Issue 68, 11 December 1875, Page 2

The Education Board, complete, let ns hope, instead of fragmentary, will meet on Monday next, and, as the Chairman so far has declined to listen to any protest on the part of the ratepayers, members will then proceed to allot the reserves at the Board’s disposal, in their own quiet way, for periods of fourteen and twenty-one years respectively. The subject lias been worn pretty well threadbare, but on this, the last opportunity, we deem it our duty to offer a few closing remarks. One great and chief argument of the advocates of the tender system is, that such is not practised in the old country by laudlands. We .will accept their simile, and refute them them out of it. The landlords in question are the sole owners , and can do as they like with their own. The members of the Board, in connection with these reserves, are the steward* of the ratepayers, who are the owners. Carrying on their special illustration, how- long does the Board suppose a steward would retain office, if Ids employer instructed him in emphatic terms to lease certain lands by auction, and lie coolly turned round and said that ho thought it preferable to lease them by tender, that his opinion was better than that of the landlord ho represented, and that, in spite of any instructions to the contrary, he should do so ? What sympathy would he meet with, if ho was turned out of office forthwith, however loudly his friends might object on the ground that he had only recently been appointed ? Hence the parallel, if parallel it is, tells against the Board, and Mr Middlcmas’ assertion, that “it is dearly the duty of the Board to decide such questions,” fails utterly. We pass over that gentleman’s thin excuses for not calling the special meeting requested, as puerile and ridiculous. One of them, that to have done so would have been contrary to Wellington rules, is so comical that we really cannot help feeling intensely t surprised at the Chairman gravely putting it forward. The Wellington rules arc not adopted here, as yet at all events, and, as far as their applicability to the proceedings of the Pate a Board goes,'those of Kamschatka- —if they have Education Boards in those regions—might as well be quoted. Again, the exquisite absurdity of drnggingMay’s Parliamentary Practice into the doings of a paltry little local body like the Patea Education Board could only haye been indulged in by the newly-fledged Chairman, who suffers seriously from Parliament on the brain, and apparently intends, as far as be can, to convert the Board proceedings into a miniature burlesque of the House of Commons. In conclusion, we wish to impress on all the members of the Board that, in persisting in the

course they Lave taken, they are acting directly against the wishes of the ratepayers, as expressed at public meetings, in CaHyle, at Manntahi, Hawevu, and Ketemarae. They are doing so wilfully, with their eyes open ; they are administering estate that does not belong to them, but to the public, in absolute opposition to the desire of the owners, and they are alienating property for long periods, iii a maifner that, even they miif some day regret. \V c have done all that has lain in onr power to induce reconsideration without avail, tin? public l.nve spoken in such plain terms thitt fttw wobld disregard, but tbe Bojifd wifi p'ursde their pigheaded emirs'e, to tbe loss of the ratepayers, for the triumph of their own obstinacy-. In days to conic, tbe ratepayers will have reason to rue ever having placed the “ tender” majority in office; in the meantime, before the sacrifice is complete; on tbe part of the people of Carlyle, Manntahi, Hffwera, and Ketemarae, we wish to enter this final protest, and to declare and place on record the fact, that the I’atea education Board is about to dispose of public property, for long terms of years, in defiance of public opinion, and contrary to the expressed desire of the public, ascertained at public meetings held in the chief centres of the district.