deliberately taken this power out of the hands of the judges and
lodged it in those of the Minister of Education, who, in accordance
with our method of making Ministers, will necessarily be a political
partisan, and who may be a strong theological sectary into the
bargain. And I am informed by members of Parliament who watched the
progress of the Act, that the responsibility for this unusual state of
things rests, not with the Government, but with the Legislature, which
exhibited a singular disposition to accumulate power in the hands of
the future Minister of Education, and to evade the more troublesome
difficulties of the education question by leaving them to be settled
between that Minister and the School Boards.

I express no opinion whether it is, or is not, desirable that such
powers of controlling all the School Boards in the country should be
possessed by a person who may be, like Mr. Forster, eminently likely
to use these powers justly and wisely, but who also may be quite the
reverse. I merely wish to draw attention to the fact that such powers
are given to the Minister, whether he be fit or unfit. The extent
of these powers becomes apparent when the other sections of the Act
referred to are considered. The fourth clause of the seventh section
says:--

"The school shall be conducted in accordance with the
conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary school in
order to obtain an annual Parliamentary grant."

What these conditions are appears from the following clauses of the
ninety-seventh section:--

"The conditions required to be fulfilled by an elementary