Preface.

In a few short years the old Trustees of Grafton Road and Three Kings Wesleyan Native Institution properties will have all passed away. It is therefore very important that all reports, letters, and other records relating to same should be collected and printed and kept with the deeds, for the information of those who follow; and it is with this object, and as a contribution to such a collection, that I have collated and printed the information contained in this pamphlet.

The Institution referred to was established by the Rev. Walter Lawry in 1844. He was then the Superintendent of Wesleyan Missions in New Zealand, and the Rev. Thomas Buddle, who was placed in charge of it, and superintended the erection of the building in Grafton Road, where the Institution was established, made a report at the time to the Foreign Mission Committee in London, a draft of which was found amongst Mr. Buddle's papers. This Report is of special value, conclusively proving, as it does, that the Wesleyan Mission, at the time the grant of Grafton Road property and the original Three Kings grant of 192 acres were made, had no other object in view than the training of Native ministers.

Perhaps it is as well that the question as to the interpretation of the trusts of these grants, and of the subsequent grants made by Sir George Grey, should have arisen while some of those who know the circumstances are still alive. I mean the question as to whether the rents received from the original grants can be legitimately amalgamated with those received from the Sir George Grey grants, which latter grants "extended the operations" of the "Wesleyan Native Institution to wider educational purposes, and as to whether the District Meeting did right, during the time when the Institution was unavoidably closed, in appropriating the rents to the support of the Native Missionaries, which I unhesitatingly say was the right thing to do, and am supported by the legal opinions quoted in this pamphlet.

Various legal opinions have been taken on the interpretation of the Trusts of the Sir George Grey grants, but the administration of the Wesleyan Native Institution grants has never been questioned, and it is not for anyone to wrest the meaning of these grants by endeavouring to show that the trusts have been amalgamated with those of the Grey grants. These later grants were page 4 for the purpose of "extending the operations" of the Wesleyan Mission on an educational basis, but can by no means be held to alter the objects of those grants, which are clearly defined to be for Wesleyan purposes only. The Premier, in his place in the House, stated, "That in many cases the purposes for which endowments had been granted were defined to be 'for the use or 'towards the support and maintenance of the said school so long 'as religious education, industrial training and instruction in 'the English language shall be given to youths educated therein 'or maintained thereat,' and it was difficult to say how far those purposes might be considered to be carried out in institutions so diverse in character as the Three Kings, Auckland, which is, in part, at all events, a training college for theological students, etc."