THE SALE OF SCOTS COLLEGE

Dominion, Volume 23, Issue 56, 29 November 1929, Page 13

THE SALE OF SCOTS COLLEGE

Sir, —My letter in your issue of today was written before the meeting held in St. John’s Schoolroom took place. The one outstanding point in my letter was that the commission acted ultra vires inasmuch as it had no authority from the assembly to act as it did. Section 5 of the 1914 Church Property Act bars |he trustees selling trust property without the consent of assembly. Before this Act was passed the consent of the Presbytery was enough.

The Reverend James Hutton Mackenzie, clerk of assembly, is reported to have taken up the position at the meeting that the commission had the authority to act as it did, and that means that its decision has had the force of an assembly deliverance and it cannot be appealed against I Mr. Mackenzie accepted the judgment of the commission as final and as assembly clerk went to Scots College the following day and formally announced to the pupils the closing of the school. If Mr. Mackenzie's judgment is right, then the “Save the School” crusade seems an act of contumacy against an assembly judgment. The Bench of Judges that, as a commission, thus ended Scots College was, curious to say, nominated by Mr. Mackenzie himself. The following is the extract, dated November 30, 1028, from the Blue Book: —“The clerk moved, Mr. D. G. Clark seconded, and it was agreed: ‘That the following be a commission of assembly, with assembly powers, to deal with such matters as may be submitted thereto by the church property trustees: The Moderator, the clerk, the treasurer, the bhurch property frustees, Revs. J. R. Blanchard, R. S. Watson, E. J. Orange, J. Davie, G. T. Brown, Messrs. W. A. Patterson, R. W. Porter. A. R. Stone, W.' Hopkirk, W. D. Menelaus, C. S. Falconer, F. C. Spratt. Five to form a quorum.’ ” If only five had turned up at the commission , Mr. Mackenzie would have been bound by the terms of his own motion to go on . with the business. Mr. Mackenzie’s motion really appointed the usual formal rubber stamp commission to comply with the letter of the law, and it never was given the power it exercised. However, the clerk of assembly declares the commission was valid in every way, and if so the members of commission and church trustees simply carried out the duties laid upon them by the clerk of assembly, who was evidently clerk of commission, whose duty it was to hand over to trustees at the close of the commission the usual formal extract minutes. No clerk can hold back such an extract' of minntes by a meeting he has declared valid in every way. For reasons given in my letter I hold the commission’s action was invalid and that a special meeting of assembly should be called to give legal consent to the sale. Apart from this legal flaw, from the standpoint of moral right, the col- • lege was sold to the Education Department ; the Scots College board laid the £38.000 offer befort*' the commission, the commission declared for its acceptance, and the trustees, entirely impartial men, simply did what the commission ordered them to do. Granting the ruling of Mr. Mackenzie to be correct, the trustees and the large majority of the commission merit no censure but rather praise. To them the £38.000 offer was a way out of an intolerable financial muddle. —I am, etc., ROBERT WOOD. Karon', November 23.