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A Compendium of Official Documents Relative to Native Affairs in the South Island. Volume Two.

Wellington, August 18th, 1870

Wellington, August 18th, 1870.

May it please Your Excellency,

The Commissioners appointed to inquire into and report upon the condition and nature of Educational and other Trust Estates held directly under grant from the Crown upon Special Trusts for religious, educational, or charitable purposes, and particularly to inquire into the extent and application of the endowments, funds, and revenues belonging to or received by the Trustees of all such Estates in respect of the same, have taken a mass of evidence as to the past history and present page 290state of the various Trusts in question, and, after careful deliberation, have agreed to the following report:—

With respect to lands granted in trust to different religious denominations for the education of Natives, or of Natives and Europeans combined, the Commissioners have, with much regret, come to the conclusion that the attempts to effect the objects for which the lands were granted have, generally speaking, even in cases where grants of public money were made in aid of them, resulted in failure. This failure is attributable to various causes.

With reference to many of the cases, it may be affirmed that the Trustees appear to have attempted to achieve results to which the means at their disposal were inadequate, even with the pecuniary assistance afforded them, originally by the Government of New Zealand, and subsequently by the Provincial Governments, in the nature of capitation allowances; and when this assistance was withdrawn, the imperfectly established institutions collapsed. The state of warfare in which the country has been plunged since 1861, had, perhaps, a still more detrimental effect upon them. Still, making all allowance for these and other impediments to success, the Commissioners cannot but express their conviction that to the negligence and languor of action natural to bodies carrying on an experiment of considerable difficulty, without special responsibility and with resources gratuitously supplied them, at least as much as to the causes above-mentioned, is owing the failure in question.

In many cases the grants of the endowments themselves seem to be of questionable legality; in one instance, at least, the lands have been diverted from the Trusts for which they were originally granted, to objects of an entirely different character; and in one case gross misappropriation of the funds has taken place.

In all these cases, and in all those of obvious failure, it appears to the Commissioners that the only effectual remedy will be the removal of the Trustees, and vesting the Estates in a responsible officer or officers. The evidence accompanying this and former reports of the Commission seems abundant to prove that the evil to be remedied lies deeper tban the mere appointment of visitors or auditors, periodically inquiring into the proceedings of Trustees and investigating accounts, could reach or remove.

The Commissioners, therefore, with a view to the maintenance of the rights of, the persons beneficially interested in these grants, and in order to secure to them the advantages contemplated when they were made, recommend that an Act should be introduced into the Legislature, empowering the Government to appoint an Official Trustee or Trustees, in whom all these Estates should be vested, upon precisely the same trusts (wherever these latter should not be considered positively illegal), as those for which they were originally given. These Trustees should be invested by the Act with powers to combine the funds accruing from any number of these Estates within the same district, given upon similar trusts, whenever it should appear to them that the trusts could be more effectively carried out by such combination, In these combinations, denominational distinctions and the appropriation of the lands for the children of persons of particular sects should, as far as possible, and whenever the beneficial objects of the Trusts would be better attained thereby, be disregarded. It is believed that by a judicious combination of this kind, at least one boarding-school in each district might be established, in which Maori children might, from the earliest age practicable, be lodged, educated, and brought up entirely as Europeans, both in habits and intellectual acquirements; and that thus some portion, however small, of the Native race might be rescued from the deg[gap — reason: damage]dation and extinction that otherwise seems to threaten them.

With respect to all the above Estates or Institutions, as well as to the few which have been attended with success, the Commissioners recommend that a Commissioner should be appointed to whom all Trustees should, in the month of April in every year, furnish reports showing the condition of the Trusts, and the degree in which the objects for which they were created are being effected; together with a balance sheet showing all the receipts and expenditure, assets and liabilities, connected with the Trusts during the previous year: such Commissioner to cause the accounts to be audited, and to send in a report annually to the Governor, in time for presentation to both Houses of the Legislature. It may also be found advisable to vest in such Commissioner the necessary approval of all proposed dealings by the Trustees with the Trust properties, and to provide that the Trustees shall be indemnified when acting with such approval. Precedents of legislation in this direction will be found in "The Charitable Trust Estates Acts (Imperial), 1853 to 1869."

The Commissioners abstain on the present occasion from particularizing the Institutions to which the above recommendations should severally be applied; but they are prepared to do this whenever they shall be apprised that the Government have consented to adopt the general principles on which their recommendations are founded.