THE EDUCATION BOABD. (To the Editor.)

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4350, 10 June 1896, Page 4

THE EDUCATION BOABD. (To the Editor.)

Sir, — Those who know your Dunedin correspondent will not be surprised at the attack he again makes on me. The time is drawing near when Mr J. F. M. Fraser has to woo the sweet voices of the Otago committeemen ; last time he climbed in on the shoulders of Mr Macgregor and myself, but by this time he has proved himself false to every promise he made, and your Dunedin correspondent must draw committGemGD off th<s scent;; so what bettor course can he adopt than by traducing me for your readers' benefit ?

I am quite free to admit that I was not blameless in the dispute at the Boavd-table ; but your correspondent is simply lying when he accuses me of contradicting every member of the Board and the Secretary, and your correspondent knows it. As a matter of fact, the whole row was started by Mr Fraser, who, like a " Jack-in-the-box," was all the while making sotto voce remarks across the table to annoy me ; whilst immediately I rose to speak he publicly accused me of interested motives, and attempted to make the question a party one, instead of a question as to whether certain votes were legal or not. The votes were as follow : — Mrs Jackson, living in a tent, voted as a parent of children attending school, her husband being elected on the same qualification (he was in Naseby at the time), Mrs Cahill voted on the same grounds, and her husband was in the colony. A boy called Le Brun voted on a miner's right qualification and had none; Wm. Boyd voted on a miner's right aud bad none. The Act distinctly says that a woman can only vote a? parent if her husband is dead or absent from the coloDy. Id the cases of Mrs Cahill and Mrs Jackson, the votes were, therefore, clearly illegal; while the illegalty of Le Brun and Boyd was admitted by the chairman of the meeting (Mr Kinney)" inasmuch as he never attempted to rr-ply to the objection. The voting at Hyde only showed a difference of one between the winners and those defeated, and the objectors clearly proved that four illegal votes had been recorded, and I submit, Sir, that the question was not a personal one but purely one of judicial character, as Mr Macgregor and Mr Cohen at once saw.

Regarding my charge thai Mr Praser bad got the letter and petition from Jackson, I contend that I was perfectly justified in my assumption. The first knowledge I, as a member of the Board, had of that document was when. I saw Mr Fraser throw it across the table ; and what was more natural than to assume that he had got it from Mr Jackson ? Mr Fraser has no right to take papers from the Secretary's private table, and I am not supposed to know that he has such objectionable habits ; nor did I know when I made the statement that he had done so.

A good deal was made by Mr Kinney of the fact that, certain defeated candidates were relatives of mine; but he wisely refrained from (telling the Board that those elected were relatives of his. So far as the dispute at Hyde was- concerned, I had nothing to do with it, and did not go to record my vote. Had I wished to interfere, I could easily have altered the state of the poll, as several votes around me were not recorded.

Your Dunedin correspondent will no doubt villify and misrepresent me on every possible occasion ; but I suppose I will survive those attacks. No man of any consequence is free from them, and the frequency of them is a guarantee that whatever I may be I am no noodle. Were I a nonentity or a "dumb dog" or even a Democratic aspirant for a judgeship, I would no doubt escape scathless. Meantime, like Burns, I can say, "the mair that they clatter the better I'm kent," and confidently let time decide vrhat I am as a public man. — I am, etc., Jno. J. Ramsay. Hyde, Ist June. [Evidently Mr Hamsay is under the impression that Mr' J. F. M. Fraser is our Dunedin correspondent ; but we can assure him he is quite mistaken in such a supposition.— Ed. " T.T."]

Sir C. Tupper considers that there is a good prospect of the colonies maturing a scheme at an early date which will justify Lord Salisbury in renouncing the German and Belgian treaties.