ii.] THE SCHOOL BOARDS. 35 



Of these, the seventh, the fourteenth, and the ninety- 

 seventh deal with the subject-matter of education, while 

 the sixteenth defines the nature of the relations which 

 are to exist between the &quot;Education Department&quot; (an 

 euphemism for the future Minister of Education) and 

 the School Boards. It is the sixteenth clause which is 

 the most important, and, in some respects, the most 

 remarkable of all. It runs thus : 



&quot; If the School Board do, or permit, any act in contravention of, or 

 fail to comply with, the regulations, according to which a school pro 

 vided by them is required by this Act to be conducted, the Education 

 Department may declare the School Board to be, and such Board shall 

 accordingly be deemed to be, a Board in default, and the Education 

 .Department may proceed accordingly ; and every act, or omission, of 

 nny member of the School Board, or manager appointed by them, or 

 any person under the control of the Board, shall be deemed to be per 

 mitted by the Board, unless the contrary be proved. 



&quot; If any dispute arises as to whether the School Board have done, or 

 permitted, any act in contravention of, or have failed to comply with, 

 the said regulations, the matter shall be referred to the Education Depart 

 ment, whose decision thereon shall be final&quot; 



It will be observed that this clause gives the Minister 

 of Education absolute power over the doings of the 

 School Boards. He is not only the administrator of the 

 Act, but he is its interpreter. I had imagined that on 

 the occurrence of a dispute, not as regards a question of 

 pure administration, but as to the meaning of a clause 

 of the Act, a case might be taken and referred to a court 

 of justice. But I am led to believe that the Legislature 

 has, in the present instance, deliberately taken this 

 power out of the hands of the judges and lodged it in 

 those of the Minister of Education, who, in accordance 

 with our method of making Ministers, will necessarily 

 be a political partisan, and who may be a strong theo 

 logical sectary into the bargain. And I am informed by 

 members of Parliament who watched the progress of the 



3 



