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Evening Star, Issue 5170, 30 September 1879, Page 3

The Wellington correspondent of the 'Hawkes Bay Herald' says :—" It is reported that the Hon. W. IT. Reynolds and Mr George M'Leaß, M.H.R., have bought the 'New Zealand Times.'" At the Port Chalmers Police Court this forenoon, Thomas Murphy, Edward Murphy, and Dunc-ui Sinclair, charged with drunkenness, were discharged with a caution. Mr A. Thomson, J.P., presided. A petition is being largely signed in Wei lington praying that the Education Ac, may be amended in the following directions :

"1. That the system of electing EducaI tional Boards established under the loth section of the Education Act, 1877, is unnecessarily cumbersome and complicated. 2. That the Bystem referred to is, moreover, unsatisfactory, because from its very nature it does not afford to the country Committees, which are widely scattered, and have not the same facilities of inter-communication as the town Committees, that freedom of choice which is absolutely necessary to insure the return of members who will make it their special duty and business to attend to the wants of their own specific districts, as well as of the educational district of which each board has charge as a whole. 3. That a more simple and satisfactory method of election, to ensure a fair and just representation, would be to divide each educational district into a convenient number of electoral districts, and to enact that each of these electoral districts should return a member or members sufficient in the aggregate to make up the whole Rumber of which the board of each educational district consists. 4. That the present division of the Colony into local districts affords ample facilities for effecting this change in the law under which the national system of education is administered without expense, and with little trouble or difficulty. 5. That by this means the local committees, who at present form the electoral bodies by which the members of the boards are returned, would be enabled to act more easily in concert, and a very much more faithful representation of all parts of each district would be Bcured. That under this system, if established, the election of each board abould take place annually, as soon as possible after the annual election of the local committees."