partment, whose decision
thereon shall be final_."

It will be observed that this clause gives the Minister of Education
absolute power over the doings of the School Boards. He is not
only the administrator of the Act, but he is its interpreter. I
had imagined that on the occurrence of a dispute, not as regards a
question of pure administration, but as to the meaning of a clause of
the Act, a case might be taken and referred to a court of justice. But
I am led to believe that the Legislature has, in the present instance,
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
school in order to obtain an annual Parliamentary grant shall
be those contained in the minutes of the Education Department
in force for the time being.... Provided that no such minute
of the Education Department, not in force at the time of the
passing of this Act, shall be deemed to b