A—No. 3

5

The new Trustees in these cases should have power to investigate past accounts, and the validity of claims arising out of them, and, if necessary, to raise funds to liquidate them. This remark will apply to several other Estates. lII. — Wanganui Industrial School Estate. This was a Grant of about one-third of the then existing town-site of Wanganui to Trustees of one religious denomination, for the purposes of education. The whole of the land had been laid out in streets and quarter-acre sections, the former of which were shut up by the Grant and the latter abolished, and the extension of the town in that direction precluded. The rents of this Estate have been appropriated to the erection of a Schoolmaster's house and grammar-school, except a small portion to the support of the school, which, though excellent of its kind, is not a fulfilment of the Trust? contemplated, inasmuch as the class of children apparently intended by the Grant to be benefitted, are not such as can afford to pay the fees necessarily payable to enable them to attend the School. Looking at the magnitude of the Grant, and the loss which the people of the place have suffered by the diversion of the land from its original purpose, the Commissioners recommend that the land should, whenever practicable, be laid out again, and rendered available for Town purposes, and that the annual proceeds should be so appropriated as to give the inhabitants of every denomination and every class a fair share in the benefits accruing from the Grant. IV.- — The Grants to the Church of England at Motueka, Province of Nelson. These Grants, which have caused much local dissatisfaction, appear to have conveyed an amount of land (consisting of Reserves originally made for the benefit of the whole of the Natives residing around the Settlement of Nelson,) disproportionate to the relative number of Natives of that denomination in the settlement. The attempts to establish a School there must be characterized as failures. It would seem only just that the Trusts in this case should be so altered as to give the whole of the Natives of the Province a share in the benefits contemplated when the Reserves were originally made. By a combination of the rents of these Preserves with those of the Town of Nelson Reserves, a fund would be obtained amply sufficient to establish a good and efficient boarding-school in the last named place, of which all the Natives of the Province could reap the advantage. There is an accumulation of about £1,100 accruing from rents of the Town and Motueka Reserves still vested in the Crown now to the credit of the Trust in the hands of the Commissioner of Native Reserves (Mr. Alexander Mackay, whose management of those Estates deserves every commendation). The aggregate rental amounts at present to about £1,200 a year, which will increase every year, as the lands are let on rentals increasing with the length of the terms. It would require then but little additional assistance from any funds Government might have for the purpose, to establish the proposed school at a very early date. Where so much appears of an unsatisfactory nature, it is gratifying to refer to circumstances in which the objects of the Trusts appear to have been well attended to. Among these the Commissioners may mention the school for Native girls at what is called the St. Joseph's Providence, at Wellington, the site of which institution Avas granted to the Roman Catholic Bishop. An inspection of the school, made without any warning or preparation whatever, seemed sufficiently to prove, both as to the building itself and the children resident therein, the exemplary manner in which the institution is conducted. Of the administration of the lands included in the Grants for Educational purposes in the Provinces of Canterbury and Otago, it is perhaps the best commendation to have to report that they seem to call for no particular interference.