The Board's Action.

1. It is very important to keep clear in view what really has been the substantive action of the Board, as distinguished from this and that suggested construction of the action. The substantive action is what was defined by the Board itself, in the original resolution of 18th October, 1883, viz.: disrating, to the effect of dealing with the High School as a common school. This, and this only, is the thing proposed to be done, as declared by the Board itself both in that original resolution and all through the subsequent relative action of the Board. Disrating, to the effect of dealing with the school as a common school, is alone the action of the Board as defined by the Board itself. It is the only thine in the Board's action that has been reclaimed and protested against by the citizens of Oamaru and their representatives.

2. As to the Board's proposed form of proceeding. by the way of reducing the educational apparatus—numbers and emoluments of teachers—to the common school scale, it is very important to observe that this, in avowed intention as well as inevitable effect, is a way, not of duly maintaining the school as a school of secondary education under the Act, but of lowering it into the position of a common school. Messrs Hislop and Creagh, while intimating that the Board have not power of law to disrate the school, called attention to the circumstance, that the Board are by law empowered to determine the scale of apparatus, beyond Head Master, to be employed for maintenance of the school. And the Hon. Robert Stout, in his opinion as counsel to the Board, while in like manner intimating that the Board have not power to reduce the school expressly, pointed out a way in which the power, in relation to number and emoluments of teachers, given to the Board for the purpose of maintaining the school as a High School, might conceivably be so employed as really to reduce it to the position of a common school. And this is what the Board mean to do, effectively and avowedly, and are proceeding to do.

(1). Effectively, to reduce the school to the common school level in respect of educational apparatus, is in this case inevitably to reduce it from being a High School, page 7 in respect either of respectability or of continued efficiency. For working purposes of secondary education here the difference between "express" and oblique disratement is only in words. The guardian breaks his trust who, in the use of discretionary powers for the purpose of secondary education to an heir, provides the means only of primary education. Killing is murder though the stroke should be not a downright but a slanting one; or though the instrument should not be open violence but slow poison or starvation. And (2) avowedly, what the Board mean, what they are proceeding to do, is not to maintain the school (poorly or starvingly and disgracefully) as a High School, but to break down the constitution of it so as to place it on the footing of a common school. The proof of this is contained in the terms of the original resolution, in the clear light of all the subsequent resolutions of the Board. All the relative action of the Board has been, solely and simply, in pursuance of that resolution, to place the school on the footing of a common school. For instance, they show what they mean by suitably maintaining a High School in the published Regulations regarding scale of teachers and salaries for such a school. From such bye-laws, even from ordinary resolutions, they are forbidden by law to depart without a previous process of notice of motion and warning to all members of the Board. There has been no such previous process in this case:—plainly because the school is already being treated as not a High School but a common school. Again, to place the school on the footing of a common school is, alone, set forth as the intended effect of the original resolution, by the Secretary of the Board, in his official intimation to teachers of the impending operation of that resolution, in reducing their number and their salaries. And finally, the Board, after that official intimation under their instructions, when their attention was called to the Oamaru people's pretest against the resolution as thus understood and applied, have refused to depart from it, and resolved to proceed to carry it into definitive operation.

The question here suggested is, of course, What is the best way of proceeding to prevent that action from becoming definitive to its intended effect, discontinuance of the school as one duly maintained for secondary education under the Act.