A PLEA FOR PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY PROCURATOR

Evening Star, Issue 20486, 17 May 1930, Page 23

A PLEA FOR PRESBYTERIAN ASSEMBLY PROCURATOR

CONFUSION IN PROCEDURE For I beheld . , . and among them was no Counsellor.” —Isaiah. TO THI EDITOR. Sir, —For several years attention has been called from time to time in the secular Press to the fact that in tho New Zealand Presbyterian Assembly there is no procurator, or legal adviser. This fact was brought before last Assembly, and it was moved “That tho Advisory Board be instructed _to consider the advisability of appointing a procurator, and to report to next Assembly.” The motion was rejected. The reason of the rejection may have been the fear of increasing the already staggering cost of running tho Assembly, but in some Presbyterian Churches it has been found possible to get tho services of a highly-trained legal expert without one penny of cost, and tho Assembly might have found such an unselfish official. There is an urgent need of such an official in an assembly made up of members, the vast majority of whom have no adequate knowledge of even recent resolutions passed by the Assembly. The only officials recognised in the “Book of Order” are the moderator and assembly clerk. All the burden laid on the assembly clerk is to keep minutes, give extract minutes, and take the custody of Assembly papers. The Assembly may violate its forms and rules, and imperil the civil rights of members of Assembly, and the clerk has no more responsibility than any other voting member of Assembly. Th no digest has been made of the proceedings of assemblies running back nearly thirty years, and resoluti s contradicting former resolutions may pass without let or hindrance. It would be the business of a legal adviser to save the church f: . such evils, and it is to bj deplored that a motion to consider this matter should have been brushed aside.

Every properly officered Presbyterian Church has a procurator. The office is as old as the Presbyterian Church. I have before me the 'Book of the Universal Church of Scotland,’ being the Assembly minutes from 1560 onwards, and I find that as early as 1564 James Makartney, a trained lawyer, was made legal ad-iser. I have also before me the minutes of the Free Church of Scotland Assembly for 1843, and the Church was only a few days old when one of the greatest lawyers of Scotland, Alexander Murray Dunlop—the man who drew up the famous “claim of rights”—was appointed, by the unanimous and enthusiastic vote of Assembly, to this office, and, in accenting the other, he stipulated that his services would be given free. The presence of legal advisers in the United Free Church Assembly and the Church of Scotland Assembly assured wise guidance in the churches moving to union, and the services of Lord Sands, Procurator in the Church of Scotland, were of inestimable value. Under the wise guidance of the legal advisers of the two churches, the Established Church of Scotland took its life in its hand, and went to the Parliament and asked for the passing of two enabling Bills that gave it the freedom of a voluntary church, and its requests were granted. The absence of a legal adviser in the New Zealand Presbyterian Assembly has Jed to contradiction, inconsistency, and confusion in the business transacted. Confusion has led to procedure being made to suit the occasion, and action has been determined by events, and the “ cult of the jumping cat” has been set up in the Assembly. The occasion of the motibn to consider the appointment of a legal adviser is an illustration of these unfortunate happenings. The Assembly was at sixes and sevens with regard to the relation of the Scots College, Wellington, to the church and to the Assembly. The minutes of the commission duly printed in White Book reported that the sale of the entire Scots College land and buildings had been approved of by the commission, and that the clerk of Assembly _ was requested to make an official visit to the college and intimate the closing of the college to the staff and pupils. A Commission of Assembly 7 is the Assembly, and it l7 judgment is final, and by this resolution of commission Scots College took end us a Presbyterian institution. The ‘ Outlook ’ duly reported the action of the commission. No subsequent meeting of commission was held to rescind its decision of November 12, and to recall the proclamation of the clerk of Assembly with regard to the closing of the college. The clerk of Assembly stoutly maintained, _ in November, 1929, that the commission was empowered to do what it did, and it is Presbyterian law all over the world that a commission with Assembly powers is the Assembly, and a commission with full powers decreed the sale of the college to the State_ and its ending as a Presbyterian institution. And now the cult of the jumping cat emerges in procedure. ■ The judgment of the commission is ignored; a campaign to save the college and to cancel the bargain made_ with the State is proposed and carried > at a public meeting. Procedure is made_ to suit this new situation. The judgment of the commission is ignored and Scots College is once more a Presbyterian institution; and in its interest a petition comes from Wellington Presbytery praying that the Assembly should delegate certain powers to the Presbytery in its control of tho college. This petition—clearly “ ultra vires” — was passed by tho lousiness Committee, and the Assembly wandered in blunderland on this question. In tho midst of _ the confusion the Rev. G. T. Brown interposed with the following illuminating motion; — “ Whereas the _ Assembly, having through the commission consented _ to the sale of Scots College, and having thus clearly indicated the solution it desired of tho financial problem involved, this Assembly now makes explicit to all whom it may concern that it dissociates itself from all _ further moral responsibility in connection with the future of this college, and from all financial liability beyond that which is comprised in the plant and property of the college.” . This motion, based on. fact, ana needed to avoid a further, and perhaps worse, financial muddle, was rejected m favour of a shuffling proposal that the board investigate the relation of the Assembly to its church schools, and report to next Assembly. After this niece of folly the cry for the need of a legal adviser or procurator arose. This confusion, or anarchy, in procedure with regard to Scots College did not begin with tho revolt against the judgment of the commission; it goes back to tho Auckland Assemblv of 1928. At that Assembly a special committee, in answer to the appeal of a deputation from Scots College for financial help, investigated every possible source of help, and at last fell upon tho fire insurance fund alleged profits. The Assembly was asked to agree that for five years £SOO should

be taken annually from the alleged profits of this fund; and the Assembly agreed to the proposal. There was no legal adviser in the Assembly to point out. that this resolution was “ utra vires,” as the Assembly had already allocated for coming years the possible profits of this fund, and there was really no _ money available from which this additional £SOO per annum could bo taken. In 1926 the Assembly, at the suggestion of the Fire Insurance Fund_ Committee, resolved, as an instruction ’to the committee—- “ That in each succeeding year after £SOO had been added to the accumulated fund a fund not exceeding £SOO be transferred to the_ beneficiary fund.” The proposal did not meet with the approval of Messrs Bell and Jenkins, exports in finance, and they moved as an amendment—“ That in each succeeding year £I,OOO be added to the accumulated fund ” —but this was lost. In 1926 their grants to the extent of, £1,150 were agreed to be taken out of the insurance fund alleged profits, and in ignorance in 1928 the Assembly agreed to take another £SOO annually for five years for Scots College. (Here we have frenzied finance indeed!)

And how does the insttJ*nco fund stand to-day? Last year out of the alleged profits there was paid as follows:—Beneficiary fund £SOO, scholarships £ll2 10s, Scots College £375, and only £234 to the accumulated fund instead of the stipulated £SOO. The Scots College grant is paid at the expense of the accumulated fund, and with the heavy fire loss of last year (£1,213) seems to be in a far from sound position. ' The capital fund is loss than £12,000, and t 1 j committee is liable for £BOO,OOO insurances. This seems a precarious risk indeedj and if the policy of robbing the' accumulated fund to pay the Scots College grants is continued the risk will be made still more precarious. It is to be hoped that the Fire Insurance Committee will act on the lines of the Rev. G. F. Brown’s motion and pay no more grants to Scots College. The grant, to say the least of it, is legally doubtful, but were it legally sound it could only be paid at the expense of robbing the institutions that were placed on the fund first. Is the widows and orphans’ fund to suffer in order to help Scots College? Surely not. These are unpleasant questions to ask, but it is unfortunate that the situation makes them necessary. The situation demands not blind guides, but a guide that sees.—■ I am, etc., Robert Wood, Wellington, May 10.