G.—s

MINUTES OF EVIDENCE.

Wellington, Thursday, Ist June, 1905. Thomas Fancourt, Archdeacon of Wellington, examined. 1. Mr. Quick.] The other side are represented by counsel: does the desirability of the trustees being represented not strike you ? —I am not a trustee. The trustees are —the Bishop of Wellington, the Rev. T. H. Sprott, and Messrs. T. F. Martin, G. E. Tolhurst, and E. Anderson. 2. Would it not be worth considering as to whether it is desirable for them to be represented by counsel ?—I do not think the trustees feel called upon —from what I gather they feel that they should wait till the evidence is given on the other side, and then they should have that before them, when they would be able to answer it. I have had no formal communication with them, I have gathered this from the Bishop, but it may be only his individual opinion. 3. They consider their attitude to be that of defendants ?—Yes. Mr. Warddl: If it is the intention of the petitioners to set up a breach of trust it might be desirable for the trustees to be represented by counsel. 4. Mr. Quick.'] They would rather not contemplate that till later on ?—They have never contemplated that. The whole history of the cases that have been before the courts has been against that. . . . . I have been in New Zealand nearly forty years, during which time I have been in the Wellington Diocese. 5. I assume what there is to know about the Porirua College during those forty years you know of your own knowledge, and prior to that you know pretty well by tradition and report ? —I do not know intimately the details during the early years ; but what general knowledge there is to be had I have; and I have a fair amount of secondhand knowledge through Archbishops Abraham and Hadfield. 6. Will you give us in narrative form what you know ? —There are two important letters of Bishop Selwyn's, given in his Life, which throw a great deal of light on what was the purpose and intention of the Natives in giving this land, and of the Bishop in accepting it. I find in his Life that it was during a visitation he was making of the whole diocese, which took in the whole of New Zealand, he stopped at Otaki, where Mr. Hadfield was in charge of the Natives. At that time Mr. Hadfield was ill. The Bishop went with a number of chiefs and others at Otaki through their lands, till they came to Porirua, and then the Natives gave this site. The Life says, "At Otaki, a green spot in the midst of a crop which seemed to be withering away because it had no root or deepness of earth, the Bishop saw much to cheer him ; and from thence the good people, many of whom had been in his Native School and College of St. John's, Auckland, accompanied him in a search over their land for the best site for a college, which was fixed at Porirua." In a letter addressed by the Bishop to the Dean of Ely in 1849 he says, " May I solicit your good offices in favour of a new institution, which we are beginning to found, called Trinity College, Porirua, to be the centre of education for the southern division of this Island ? My Native scholars, formerly at this (St. John's) College, have made over 600 acres of their own land with consent of the other owners for the purpose, as they express it, of a college for the Native and English youth that they may be united together as one people in the new principle of faith in Christ and obedience to the Queen." In 1851 another letter to the Dean of Ely says, " Your ready acceptance of the office of proxenos for one of my ' twins of learning,' scarcely yet born, emboldens me to write to you again and communicate some further particulars of the plan of Trinity College, Porirua The name of Trinity College, Porirua, was no sooner announced than Mr. Harrington, the secretary of the New Zealand Company, gave 300 guineas towards the endowment fund. But the immediate cause of the early establishment (if early it can be called) of Porirua College was the goodwill of my Native scholars of the Ngatiraukawa Tribe, who, having spent twelve months at St. John's, even while we were still in the roughest state, were so satisfied of the goodness of our intentions that they voluntarily gave 500 acres of land, in the place which of all others I should have chosen, as the site of a college for ' the English and Native youth, to be brought up together in the new principles of obedience to the Queen and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ.' This latter clause is a literal translation of the words of the Native grant dictated by the donors themselves." I take it there must be some other letter which probably went in as the official one. He goes on to say, " The first part of the plan has already gone to England for the consideration of the trustees of the Wellington Endowment Fund, and contains a proposal for investing £4,000 on the security of the college lands and buildings. The college must take its distinctive character from the definition contained in the grant of land. It must be for the benefit of the English and Native race. This involves the necessity of an industrial foundation, for it seems generally agreed that the Native race are not yet ripe for a system in which their whole time will be devoted to study alone." It was not intended to be what is called in the vulgar sense of the word an " industrial" school. Actually what he had in mind was the establishment of a college for higher education which, as he says, " may be the centre of education for the southern division of this Island." 7. This would point to its being intended as the centre for the southern division of this Island, just as St. John's is the centre for the northern division ? —Just so, I—(3. 5,