36 CRITIQUES AND ADDRESSES. [n. 



Act, that the responsibility for this unusual state of 

 things rests, not with the Government, but with the 

 Legislature, which exhibited a singular disposition to 

 accumulate power in the hands of the future Minister of 

 Education, and to evade the more troublesome difficulties 

 of the education question by leaving them to be settled 

 between that Minister and the School Boards. 



I express no opinion whether it is, or is not, desirable 

 that such powers of controlling all the School Boards in 

 the country should be possessed by a person who may be, 

 like Mr. Forster, eminently likely to use these powers 

 justly and wisely, but who also may be quite the reverse. 

 I merely wish to draw attention to the fact that such 

 powers are given to the Minister, whether he be fit or 

 unfit. The extent of these powers becomes apparent 

 when the other sections of the Act referred to are con- 

 sidered. The fourth clause of the seventh section 

 says : 



" The school shall be conducted in accordance with the conditions 

 required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in order to obtain an 

 annual Parliamentary grant." 



What these conditions are appears from the following 

 clauses of the ninety-seventh section : 



" The conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in 

 order to obtain an annual Parliamentary grant shall be those con- 

 tained in the minutes of the Education Department in force for the 

 time being. . . . Provided that no such minute of the Education 

 Department, not in force at the time of the passing of this Act, shall 

 be deemed to be in force until it has lain for not less than one month 

 on the table of both Houses of Parliament." 



Let us consider how this will work in practice. A 

 school established by a School Board may receive support 

 from three sources from the rates, the school fees, and 

 the Parliamentary grant. The latter may be as great as 

 the two former taken together ; and as it may be assumed, 



