The Lyttelton Times. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1894.

Lyttelton Times, Volume LXXXI, Issue 10273, 15 February 1894, Page 4

The Lyttelton Times. THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1894.

This much-debated question of site for the projected home for the Christchurch Hospital nurses having been at last satisfactorily settled, it is to be hoped that no time ■will be lost in proceeding with the building. Anyone who has seen the nurses’ quarters in the hospital building will recognise the urgent necessity for increased and improved accommodation. At present the nurses’ rooms are most inconveniently scattered about in odd corners of the building; they are stuffy and unwholesome apartments, with insufficient air space and scanty ventilation —the very antithesis of what ought to be provided for women whose duties are wearying and depressing, and whose health must be kept sound if these duties are to be properly discharged. The Home will be no luxury, or supererogatory adjunct, but will simply supply a pressing want. The Hospital Board has now to face the question of ways and means. The hospital fete which is being organised for the first of next month is designed at ppce to iocus public- attention upon,

the institution and its*needs, and to raise the nucleus o£ a fund which it is hoped will be largely supplemented by public subscriptions and private donations. There are special reasons for a generous response being made to the appeal for public aid to this most deserving institution. The Christchurch Hospital is the only large hospital in the colony that has absolutely no endowment of land, yet it receives the largest number of patients, who are drawn from a district extending from Ashburton in the south to the Amuri in the north. It is the most economically conducted institution of the hind in the and, as is shown by the Govern, ment returns, has more non-paying patients, proportionately, than any other hospital. While other hospitals last year received large accessions to their revenue from rents and bequests, the Christchurch institution had nothing whatever to its credit cm those accounts. Nor had it much to boast of in the way of voluntary contributions, for under this heading it received only £l9 6b, against sums varying from .£IOO to over £IOOO which other hospitals obtained from that source. In the present appeal the public should be encouraged to assist liberally by the knowledge that every shilling they give will secure about a shilling and threepence from the Government. They will also have the satisfaction of knowing that they are materially assisting in the work of providing adequate and healthful accommodation for the hard-worked hospital nurses. There will in addition be a direct public advantage derived from the Nurses’ Home. It is intended to establish, when the increased accommodation makes it possible, a Nursing School in connection with the hospital, from which there would be constantly sent forth a supply of trained nurses whose services would be in demand by people at their own houses. On every ground we have pleasure in commending to public attention the movement to raise funds for this most laudable object. Other places have their Hospital Sunday; Christchurch may well make a success of the proposed Hospital Fete,

Tee ministers and elders of the Presbyterian Assembly, now in session in Christchurch, would probably deem themselves insulted were we to recall this morning the observations of a certain pious American editor who told the world, through the medium of the “Biglow Papers,” that he believed in “eonvartin’ public trusts to very private uses.” Nevertheless the tone adopted by the Bev Gordon JVebster in reporting upon the refusal of the Government to continue to allow the Assembly the free use of the Provincial Council Chamber for its meetings leaves the impression that the Committee of Arrangements considers itself to have been badly treated by the authorities. True, Mr Webster was only aggrieved and not angry; there was no trace of recrimination in his remarks; but the tone was that of a person who had been deprived of a concession to which long custom had conferred a prescriptive right. The reverend gentleman was no doubt correct in stating that the committee in question was both unable and unwilling to pay the rent of the chamber. We commiserate with itupon itsimpecuniosity, but cannot altogether commend its desire to obtain a valuable consideration for nothing. The Government, we understand, offered to grant the use of the Council Chamber at a greatly reduced rent/ The reasons said to have been advanced for the imposition of a charge were (1) that the interests of the ratepayers demanded it, and (2) that the granting of the place free of charge would be an injustice to owners of halls in the city. There is another reason which should appeal more powerfully to the Presbyterian ministers and elders. It is that if the use of a public building were granted free to one religious body, fairness and consistency would demand that a like concession should be made to every sect that may be so poor or so frugal as to seek it. How would the good elders relish the granting of the Council Chamber for the purposes of a Theosophical or a Preethought Con-, ference? Moreover, our Colonial Presbyterians are of the sturdy stock that threw up State endowments rather than submit to State control of their worship. They surely are not now hankering after “ the flesh-pots of Egypt ” and desiring to barter their freedom of conscience for a paltry sum of money. As things have happened, the action of the Government has left their independence unimpaired, their “ honest poverty” uneorrupted, and their money in their pockets. The Assembly sits under the shadow of St Andrew, both rent and conscience free, and it might well have _ left unuttered the wail over its eviction ” from the State building.