MECHANICS' INSTITUTE MEETING THIS EVENING.

Oamaru Mail, Volume II, Issue 528, 10 January 1878, Page 2

MECHANICS' INSTITUTE MEETING THIS EVENING.

TO THE BDITOI! OF THE EVENING- MAIL. Sir, —lii this morning's Times I perceive it is noted that the meeting this evening is to consider a resolution " That a lease bo granted to Mr. F. Robertson." This is an error of your contemporary. The meeting is called in compliance with a requisition served on the Secretary, which is in the following words:—"We, the undersigned members of tho Committee of the Oamaru Mechanics' Institute, hereby require you to convene a special general meeting of the members of the Institution at an early date, to take into consideration the propriety of rescinding a resolution passed at a meeting of the Committee of the Institute held on Monday, tho 24th December iust." This requisition wa.s signed by three of the Committee who were most punctual in attendance at meetings, but conld not possibly attend a meeting called on Christmas Eve. Section 6of the byelaws of the Institute provides (after providing for the calling of the meeting by requisition, as is done in this instance) : " Only the subject stated in the requisi. tion shall be discussed at such meetings."

You will therefore see that it is not competent for the meeting this evening to consider " the granting of a lease to Mr. Robertson," it lias only to consider the rescinding of a resolution previously passed, and which is considered by the rcquisitionists and others to have been illegally passed j in other words, that the committee of the Institute had no power to pass such a resolution. This, and no other, is the business to be transacted by the meeting this evening,—I am, &c., A Member.