BEQUESTS AND PUBLIC BENEFIT

New Zealand Times, Volume LII, Issue 12249, 22 September 1925, Page 6

BEQUESTS AND PUBLIC BENEFIT

\ If bequesting for public benefit be a duty, that duty is being observed more in these our days than it used to be—in, at all events, the city of Wellington. In other cities the proportion of such bequests was so much larger than the Wellington proportion as to constitute, in the mouth of the man-in-the-street, a reproach. When bequests, or gifts, ran into hundreds of thousands in Nelson, Wanganui, Auckland, and Napier, Wellington had to her credit the solitary £IOOO of the Levin bequest for the Public Library. But improvement came in the recent past. A striking example is the bequest which gave the city the Dominion-famous Turnbull Library. The fine bequest of the T. G. Macarthy Trust brought up the Welliri'gton' record of patriotic benevolence to very much better proportion. The Walter Buchanan provision for agricultural education followed hard; the Blundell clock at the Town Hall soon began its reminder of needs if not of duties; and to-day we have the satisfaction of chronicling the Izard bequest for adding to the provision among us for the education of the people and the relief of the needy, and of voicing the appreciation and thanks of the community. The testator has, subject to the claims universally recognised as properly accompanying all property in deceased ownership, practically and largely endowed the initiative and discretion of the Wellington City Fathers. These, in the operation of their duties, gain great insight into the pressing needs of the citizens whose affairs they administer. When they acquire knowledge of cases of hardship not provided for by existing laws and methods, they find themselves in difficulty, and this difficulty the Izard Trust just created will enable them to meet in whatever fashion they may consider necessary The educational part of the trust, though of a character quite unprecedented, is really in the same category as the other. For many things are required in the. working out of the general educational system of the country for which provision is not made. The trust enables civic enterprise, duly guided, to make this provision. This inclusion of educational requirement adds breadth and comprehensiveness to the good thought by which the testator was inspired. His memory will be blessed by many iii the course of the years that are before us. Th(? late Charles Izard has arranged for the relief of distress, and for smoothing the path of the learning which is a great help towards the securing of the opportunities which it is the aim of good government to place within the reach of every citizen. The fortune he controlled at his death—a demise regretted by a very large circle of friends—was made in this city and district. He has repaid the co-operation by which it was made by leaving the bulk of it for the benefit of the best interests of his fellowcitizens.