Dr. Macgregor's Board Speech.

The following is a verbatim report of the speech which was made by the Rev. Dr Macgregor at the Otago Education Board's meeting when the question of maintaining the status and privileges of the Oamaru District High School was considered:—

We have all said from the beginning that the suppression of this High School is painful to us personally. In the new circumstances becoming unfolded into view, we see more clearly that it is desirable for the Board to feel warranted in refraining from strong action on that line. And one strong plea in justification of refraining is completed by the guarded, courteous, and in every way becoming, intervention of the Minister of Education. In relation to such matters he is to us the nation speaking through its Governmental head of department. In the process for erecting a High School he, by our law, the Minister of Education, is along with the District School Committee, made a party having interest, with a veto or free voice. The Board's part in the process is administrative, like that of a guardian who is a minister of religion, and who marries a consenting bridegroom and bride—one of them his ward. The reason is that the public interest in the matter may be more securely guarded, by the distinct free action of those two parties as natural and appropriate representatives of the public respectively; the Committee representing the local public interest, and the Minister the national public interest. Now that reason applies more strongly in a question of suppression of a High School—compare a question of divorce—for in this question there are new additional interests, arising out of the constitution once created. Here, then, is one plea in justification of refraining:—Not only the suppression has never been called for at our hands by any party having title or interest; it is opposed to the now declared mind of the only parties who have both, on behalf of New Zealand in general, as well as of the Oamaru district in particular. Another plea arises from the fact of there being a question of competency—on the merits of which my motion does not call for any deliverance. The members of the Auckland Board wore heavily fined, on account of their having gone beyond their power in a mere form, though the matter affected was not nearly so important as the existence of a national high school of the people. The criminality in our case would of course be greatly aggravated if the suppressing power belong to Parliament alone, so that our usurpation of it would be a violation of the majesty of Parliament. Apart from consequences thus suggested, a criminal arrogation of power, by an Education Board, for the purpose of destroying a high school under our guardian care, would be a scandalous thing; and on the score of moral propriety of our office we are entitled to keep far from any action that may make that impression. On this account we ought not to display even the comparatively innocent folly of assuming to be, if not absolute rulers of Otago, at least a High Court of Parliament, with power to abrogate a Parliamentary constitution of New Zealand, such as this Oamaru District High School. A coterie of deluded petits-maitres, who vainly imagine that they are kings above law, when really they are but runaway servants of the law, his "silly vassals," masquerading, with mock sceptres and crowns, in stolen fine clothes of their master! If we make that impression we may be only laughed at. But a Board of Education ought not to be ridiculous. Thus the fact of there being a question of competency is important for justification of our abstention from the action in view. Now all the lawyers tell us that power to suppress a high school is not by positive law given to the Board, even with the consent of parties, nor to any other creature: it is left in the hands of Parliament alone. And the power has for the Board no foundation in the nature of the things, as if our erecting power had carried with it the suppressing power by necessity as corelative. The minister who can marry is not on that account able to divorce, even if the husband and wife both desire it; still less, if they both be openly opposed to it; least of all, if it involve a massacre of the innocent fruits page 2 of their marriage:—which things are an allegory. In fine, the competency of the action is so reasonably doubtful as to make it reasonably certain that we ought not to do it—except upon extreme compulsion of that necessity which has no law, and which in the present case cannot be pretended with any decency. For now we observe a third and last plea, which is by the Minister put into a nutshell in his one statement of fact:—The Waitaki Governors have made no provision for girls. That is, so far as regards the daughters of the people in that district, your proposed suppression means ruin,—extinction of the secondary education under your charge. Cruel uncle of babes in the wood! you are turning them out of their father's house intrusted to you for them; and now, behold, the girl is dead: the Waitaki Governors have made no provision for girls. I believe that they cannot make any with their means, and that they are not bound to make any by their Waitaki Act. But we are bound to make it by our Education Act. We have the means in our District High School. And what happens when we have got the school destroyed? The girl is dead. By our action one full half of human kind are thrown out of secondary education. For to them the Waitaki school might as well have been in the moon. Here, for relief from the severity of this argumentation, let us indulge in a little excursion, to look at the free and easy reasonings of our days of merry infancy, before we had believed the Cassandra prophecies of dread reality of disaster to come. For instance, on the ground of the cry, that the Waitaki constitution ought to have been made right (for our purpose) by the Oamaru people, who by law had no more say in that than in the planning of Solomon's temple. In presence of the reality—the girl is dead—that cry now reminds us of pig-shearing, where there is more cry than wool. Who gave us leave to drop our own work of secondary education in order to go railing at other people for failing to do what was not their work? The wrong—if wrong there was—of setting up a High School that does not provide for girls, is it righted by knocking down the only one that does?—as the pious Highlander said of kind providence, "When wan door shuts, anither closes." And, if it be our business to punish wrongs done by other people, do we think it right to lay the punishment, not on the doers of the wrong, but upon our innocent babes? like the true-hearted Scotchwoman who bade her son go and be "hangit for the laird." Now, from the pleasant eddy or side-stream of diversion, let us return to our main stream of strenuous argumentation, and go down upon that dark career. The Minister saw that the girl is dead; and we, directed to the spot, now perceive that the boy is surely and not slowly dying. This was not needed. The Minister, who in his office stands as a lion in the path against suppression, has in his letter, by the one fact about the girl, poured a flood of joyful light upon our desired way toward maintaining the school. In that one clause he touches the point, as in clearness of lightning flash, and with precision and force of a thunder-bolt. Hoe fulmine sternitur liberum arbitrium: that bolt of his demolishes the Babel tower of all our arbitrariness in reasoning and acting. But, sitting among the ruins, we perceive the wider fact, that also for the remaining half of humankind, especially those who are our especial charge, the new school might as well have been on the summit of Mount Cook. In destination a county school, it is in operation a class school for the wealthy. Re secondary instruction our peculiar duty as a Board is to place it within easy reach of the comparatively poor, whose promising children are so interesting and important a part of the nation's true wealth. Hence the fee, in our Otago district high schools, for that instruction in all subjects to one pupil, is by Regulation fixed at 10s a quarter. The Waitaki fee is 10 guineas a year. That may suit the wealthy few in that district; for the unwealthy many in that district a 10-guinea fee shuts the door of the school. And we propose to drive them out of our school, or rather, theirs! Now for a parting diversion, in recollection of the reasonings of our gay and festive youth, before we had believed in that reality now so stern. For instance, our flings at the smallness of attendance on secondary instruction in the district, as if the way to enlarge it had been, to raise the cost of the instruction more than 500 per cent.! But the crowning argument of this free and easy sort was, and down to this present has been, the golden one—We shall save money by the suppression; therefore, go to, let us suppress. That playful argument might do when we did not seriously believe in disaster impending: it might serve as music on our march to the conclusion otherwise resolved on. But now, in harsh daylight of fact—the boy is dying, and the girl is dead—that golden argument no longer appears to be page 3 sterling. It is not even glittering brass. It is only tin, or wood, with the gilding rubbed off by friction of reality. The Oamaru people are not likely to appreciate such a reason for the destruction of their High School by their guardian Board; even the playfulness of it is too utterly like the playfulness of Grandmother Wolf to Little Red Riding Hood. Money will be saved. How much to them? A dead loss of their High School, minus a chance of getting for 10 guineas out in the country what they have hitherto got for L2 in the town. But the nation will gain L150 or L200 a year—the cost of a small country common school. Yes; this ridiculous mouse is the grand result of all that long labor of mountain volcanic! But by that gain the nation loses its people's High School in the capital of North Otago. Truly that golden argument is a wooden one. We could save money by destroying that school—a little. Yes, and we could save more money by turning all our High Schools into common schools; and very much more by turning all schools whatever into warehouses. But that is not the work we are appointed for. Our lawful business is, not to save money by suppression of schools we are bound to maintain, but to spend money in maintaining them according to our instructions. The faithful steward does not save the seed-corn which his master gives him, but sows it where his master bids him. And our master, the Education Act, bids us sow the seed of secondary education in Oamaru District High School. We may say that we have not enough for this held in addition to others. But our master says that what we have is for this field as for the others; by the same right, with the same obligation—unless indeed there be a difference in favor of the Oamaru School as an old Otago High School, not erected by us under the Act, but adopted by the nation in the Act, and there placed under guarantee of public faith of New Zealand to Otago. [What follows was not delivered]. But, says the terrible proverb, "Better a green sod than a stepmother." So may say the orphan heir of Otago "Old Identical." The cruel uncle perhaps intended to turn the babes' estate to such pious uses as the comfort and grandeur of favorite children of his own. We may favor the younger high schools of our own erection; but not at the cost of that older one As if, "Esau was the first-born, but Jacob inherited the blessing." George Whitfield, when first awakened, and not much enlightened, sought the means of being kind to the poor by stealing coppers from his mother's till. That was good in purpose, but not strictly honest in George. And a Board of Education must not do such things. We really have no right in mere honesty to lay out on other schools what is due to Oamaru High School. If this orphan-heir of old Otago be adopted by New Zealand, it must share and share alike with the other children, in either honest poverty or smiling plenty. What would we think of a town council that should, in order to light up favorite streets as brilliantly as heart can wish, cut off the gas of High Oamaru-street, and darken the North Otago quarter? I have been carried beyond the point of my motion. The question about emoluments, involving that of teaching staff, my motion proposes to postpone for consideration. It may be best that it should be deliberated on apart from this discussion, calmly and quietly, as a matter of business administration, in the exercise of our large discretion as to emoluments and teaching staff of a high school under the Act. But—as to ground or principle of conferring—I now will say that in my judgment we ought not to deal with this Oamaru school in any exceptional way of unfavorable contrast to our other schools of the same class. Of course, in this case as in all others, we shall pay due regard to economy as permitted by any special circumstances. But I think we should do this only as we might have done it if there never had been a question about turning this High School into a common school. Otherwise, we occasion dissatisfaction to the parties interested, and lower the efficiency of the school; and probably save very little money after all. If we even provide for girls, it must be on the footing of a District High School under the Act; the only provision we can lawfully make for girls will thus do for boys as well. Now in a High School under the Act, a headmaster is statutory; and in a large school for girls as well as boys one of the other teachers would require to be high-class. Their salaries, of course, would be according to their professional standing; for there is no conceivable reason why our Oamaru teachers should in this respect be put on a lower footing than that of other teachers of the same standing under our Regulations. Well, if you thus have the more framework or nucleus of a High School, such as it must be if the thing be there at all, the possible saving that remains, out of the L150 or L200 beyond cost of common education in the school, will be page 4 found insignificant as compared with the difficulties and perils created by treating the school in an unfavorably exceptional manner. There is no cause, no necessity, no justification, for branding Oamaru district by exceptional treatment. But this matter I propose to take ad avisandum. The present question is only of the existence of this High School. And that for us comes to be, Lord Melbourne's question, "Can't you leave it alone?" All this long labor of "Double, double, toil and trouble," has been caused by our not leaving it alone. Now let us leave it alone, standing as it was long before this Board existed; and so, as Abraham Lincoln said, "let us have peace."

The following motion, proposed by Dr Brown, was passed:—"That, in reply to the Minister of Education, he be informed that the Education Board is prepared to carry on the Oamaru District High School for two years, or until the endowments of the Waitaki High School are applied to their proper use."