THE TRUST FUNDS DEAD-LOCK.

Colonist, Issue 23, 8 January 1858, Page 3

THE TRUST FUNDS DEAD-LOCK.

To the Editor of the Colonist, Sir, —The Trustees of the Ne'son Trust Funds have io the last momeuts of their trustee existence, made the astounding discovery, that although they can, and no doubt have, made a cunningly devised will, yet they cannot by any possibility appoint legal executors to carry out the much prized, petted, and exclusive ■schemes contained in it. Their apologist, the editor of the Nelson Examiner, (who, by the way, is supposed to be one of thdr body, and as such would naturally enough endeavour to screen them from all blame), naively suggests that the election for trustees should proceed, as if no fU'-h mistake had been made ; and afterwards get a short act passed in the General Assembly to confirm the acts, and legalise the appointments and doings of those wonderfully clever and enlightened gentlemen—the trustees of the Nelson Trust Funds. Now, let us pause for a moment and look at the bill, and at those who brought it out. We will take the gentlemen fiist.to whom are entrusted the delicate and difficult task of putting.it together, both of them learned men, and wish to be!considered as such. Dr. Monro was the framer of the bill, so public opinion says; and I have the same gossip's authority, as to Mr.' Travers being the legal artist, into whose charge, the bill vvas given, that it might of "tIW. "gentleman's great legal abilities receive a few miihing touches from his pencil or pen, and which was no doubt done, to the general satisfaction of those who considered they had the greatest interest and share in it—the would-be aristocracy of Nelson. But, alas for the bill, it did not receive that most important of all touches, the finishing one; perhaps, multiplicity of business prevented it, or perhaps (with Jhsit feeling a cat is supposed to have while playing with a mou?e, that a good meal might be afterwards made of it), a desire to throw an apple of discord in!o our little community, as a kind of a set off—for the cavalierlike way that gentleman had been treated'by the gentlemen of Nelson might have had something to do with it— but whatever may have been the cause, -the finishing stroke was not put into it, which leaves the Trust and its Funds without trustees, and any electic-n for , the trustees without a new or amended bill, ought to be declared illegal. There are many I hear in this settlement, Sir, who have great and grave objections against allowing fresh trustee's to be elected under that imperfect, and to them, unjust Trust Funds Bill at present in operation. The working man's interest in it was not for a moment considered; had it been, that mean, unjust, and most iniquitous clause which gives to men of large property a plurality of votes, and which requires the working man to possess double' the amount of property, to qualify Him to give one vote for trustees of the

Trust Funds, than that which-a liberal Government exacts for a. qualification to vote for a Superintendent of the Province, members of' the General Assembly and Provincial Councils, in which five times the amount of their paltry Trust Funds is voted away every year for the-benefit of, the colony. It Was a miserable piece of class legislation, galling enough it was, I have no doubt, to allow the working man a vote at that price. But now comes the acme of injustice towards him: a Superintendent was found mean enough to sanction a grant of money by the trustees from the Trust Funds, and which the Bill neither gave him nor them any authority to grant, for the purpose of hiring an agent to object to claims made by working men to vote, as being under value, which lie did; and it was well understood by. ; many that he never had seen the properties objected to. The people, indignant at the .insult offered them, rose in their strength and crushed the conspiracy. Now, my fellow settlers, I will point out to you how the gross injustice shown you may be rectified. Through the bungling of some of our would-be red tape legislators, the old Bill must be amended or a new one brought in. So I would advise you , to petition the v General Assembly to do away with that unjust clause, which deprives many of you of a vote; and the same qualification which enables you to vote fdr a Superintendent should be considered sufficient for the election .of-, trusteed for the Trust Funds. And I also would advise you to elect other and more libetal trustees, unless you want your children to become the slaves of those,, who by their ac s are straining every nerve t. keep cllege <educati-__ from your chi dreri. Under the present Trust Funds Act you have very little thance. None of your children will ever get a college education unl-ss ypu can make great sacrifices. Look at. tlie exhibitions and scholarships that have been granted up to the present time, under the pretence of assisting tlnis. living in the country, who could not, aff-rd to maintain their children while receiving a college education. Who has taken advantage of thi. ? Not the poor man for whom it wa* said to be intended No : they have been generally given to the children of vvea'thyrutihdlders, a-id one of the trustees (a weathy man) did not, think it. beneath his dignity to take two exhibitions, i. c. M s. d. for his children, —the hut man in my opinion (hat should have been guilty of so mean an action. Now this wants altering,... Besides, it is getting so exclusive, so thoroughly Church of England, that a Dissenter, however clever I hear, stands no chance of getting an office in it, unless it is a very inferior one. The Nelson Collegiate School Episcopal is, with its brazen nose (college) master, an! Episcopal it is likely to be with'its no less Episcopal and brazenfaced, in that particular, trustees, —who are all pulling in one boat, and pulling the boat as fast as tHey can towards that Ecclesiastical maelstrom, Mother Church, in which it will eventually (unless the Dissenters strive manfully to prevent it) be engulphed, and which if once allowed, will take (as it has done in England) years of labour, extraordinary talent, and a great, pecuniary sacrifice, to make it disgorge the precious morse. Hoping, Sir, ! that the people will be up and doing, and prevent such a catastrophe, I beg to remain yours respectfully, AN OLD SETTLER, Nelson, December 30th,, 1857.

T<? the Editor of the Colonist.

Sir, —As we are starting a new year, it might not be amiss to grant a crusty old fellow, whose main,solace, in this age of dirt-sifting, is in watching some ofthe mists that roll up the slopes of Parnassus, without ever seeing any muse—-old Sol alone giving him a spark of inspiia'ion. I used to find a great deal to grumble at in Homer and Plato, and the queer ancients, who were so prone to steal from one another. Folks used''to call me all sorts of nick names for my pains; but Gro'e and many more moderns are now stou ly shewing that, after all, I was right, and tiiat the great Bows of antiquity shot the arrows'of thought from a thousand hands. Iv other words your halfdeified geniuses were only in their day subeditors, with' shears and iron pen, cutting and scrawling, so as to patch up something vastly like a newspaper or a magazine. However it may be, as you have a poet's corner, and as almost anything is better than tlie prosing stupidity of a generation to Boeoiim for even a Bion to growl at, or a Butler or Swift to ridicule, I hope you will put my ditty where it may be likely for some little boy to read it. Our only c'; ance now is to get something more than common, or even "waste land," sense into the poor fellows who are'so likely to inherit the stolidity of their progenitors. In my day—a time when the intellect was the great Australia of mining and washing for gold—we used to' have some glorious fights for truth; —that was our poetry. But lies, fiction, and folly are now in large request,—save in merchants' accounts, steam-engines, and the like. Wnen do you think we shall, get any of our youngsters to read a great author, as some of the present Jewish doctors do the Bible, until they can repeat it backward from memory ? Or as we fancy heroic Alec, must have done Homer by heart and before his sleep ? Or as the young men in Athens did the great masters, aim ist religiously, with notes and comments, in social livalry ? I am afraid we have more books than either careful readeis or thinkers.—l did think of giving you. a picture of life in olden times, but lo! I fear it would be as dreadful as if I bad written the course of time," and everlasting after it! It seems to me that barefooted Socrates, with his face something like a fallow, getting the benefit of the sun on its roughness, w.ould have bad many a jolly laugh, had he been here to see die minds that are to give character to posteiity. But his very fun would have been reforming; and, perhaps, it would have got him a place in the lock-up, as his ugliness and wisdom did in spite of his loving friends of yore. Real truth, in any age, is a kind of Socrates— a beauty to none but the initiated. But whither am I going ? I foiget that I am peeping in upon a place called Nelson, and .asking for a place in the poet's corner of the Colonist, in the nineteenth century of Christ.—Adieu. ZOILUS. January 1, 1858. [For the poetry contributed by our correspondent we refer the readers of the Colonist to our fourth page.]

To the Editor of the Colonist. Sir, —At tho opening of our Council on Tuesday, Mr. Mackay, made his debut, presenting a long catalogue of notices of motions, to quicken our fixity I presume into a full gallop. The poles of our little political world are to be so rectified that one year is no,n_ore to be a mere day one quarter of which was in light and the rest in icy night. A day is to be a day of brisk movements corresponding with those of "the great globe" which we inherit at our

forty of latitude. Well d.ne, Mackay! he has set right the poles without doing any damage to Lloyds! Our Council room is to be busy as 'Change, and be quite a mart of legislation. All sorts of knowledge are to be slain, skinned, cured, and stuffed, aud made to look shining arid lifelike, and then styled Ordinances. All kinds of peltry are to be used up. We are to have quite a museum of birds and beasts ! An exhibition in no time! Mr., Mackay is the man ; in a fortnight he may count on sixpence a head for the sight of it, with perhaps a rail-, way to the wonders, and steam at full speed ! But as one of the songs at the concert ofthe same evening very graphically told us—such "ironing". —: on a rail is very likely to be followed by the washerwoman's advertisement — " Mangling done here," and done with fatal effect. The old/ adage of greatest hurry, least speed, may receive confirmation from such attempts at overdoing. If such pitchforking into the Council of every crotchet of a bustling and hurrying conceit were to characterise every poli icul dabbler, it would require a daily paper to publish inventories ofthe same ; as it must require monthsof careful study to master many of the subjects — subjects of which an infant may prattle but which require a comprehensive inte.eet to rule. It may seem quite magnifique for a French cook to exhibit, a bill of fare like a streamer, but it will;. demand unwonted gastric abilities to swallo^and digest all the compounded rarities in the intended mes.. May it be hoped that Mr. Mackay will have sapience equal to the labour of devouring the whole himself. Has he professes to belong to the Macculloch school (?) of economists and to " act many.parts," it may he desirable for him to reckon the extent of his numerals in order'to ascertain whether he can In reality find in himself something of asign of equality to the work he would order for others I know not, Sir, what the members ofthe Council thought, but while I saw Him playing the harlequin with his papers, I could nut but think there was a wide titter at his comlcul absurdity. Doei he really comprehend a fraction ofthe tremendous folly of which in his vanity he would be the ostensible author ? When the. time comes for exp ana-ion we should like to hear him making out,.; puzzle after puzzle, what he can by any possibility, be meaning. But, probably he only i;iten-Is to be amusing, and to put the Council in good iiuuiour by acting one of thg .^xoaay.., parts ". of dear old Slmkspeare"; but if the rest of the act is to he acted, then, Comedy, preserve us ! Are we to regard thess bell-man's notices to which the honorable member treats us as preventives of other motions of.more grave-and commanding importance? Is it the feint, the preposterous dodge of a forward man, accustomed to shifts and moves? But he might know that it is not difficult to manufacture an automaton for the .little market for such things even in Nelson. Be-idesif he would.. foii parties who have other measures to bring forward of permanent value «to the settlement, it may at least be hoped that lie has made a false reckoning, not the first, I presume, iri his recollection. Hitherto Mr,. Mackay has striven hard to keep himself in the eye of Nelson as somebody. ' I am glad at least to find him in a situation to demonstrate whether his position has not been gained by acting his " many parts'," rather than by the solid excellencies of an intelligent, an enlightened and a well-in formed citizen. -.-■'',. In- these remarks I do not question Mr. Muckay.'s right, if his bright mind so direct, him, to bring a load of notices forward, or even to fill a pair of panniers and patiently bear them, to the Chairman, but it would be a pity for him to do much/more than he has done to make it doubtful as to the species of his intellect--80-PEEP. Brook-street, January 6th, 1858. v