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137
The School Board took exception to a neighbouring
Vestry (St. Margaret and St. John, Westminster) having
issued a circular to their ratepayers impressing upon them
the importance of the issue at stake in the Election of the
Board, and curtly called upon the auditors to surcharge the
Vestrymen with the expenses incurred thereby. The
reply of the Auditors to the Clerk of the Board, so admirably
expresses the relations which exist between Vestries
and the ratepayers in the matter of the School Board rate
that it is given in full as follows :—
Sir,
We are duly in receipt of your letter of the 11th instant.
Without admitting your authority to address us upon the subject of
the Vestry's expenditure in relation to the issue of a circular, or
commenting1 on the needlessly peremptory tone of your letter, we
have agreed, being actuated by a sense of public duty, to transmit
the following observations thereon :
Under ordinary circumstances we should not have met until the
month of May, but we feel that to have held this matter over until
then might have been construed into indifference or unwillingness on
our part to look into the matter at once. We have, therefore, held a
Special Meeting.
We are quite unable to find anything tending to bias for or against
any person or party, or that the circular was used for the purposes of
"agitation," as your letter suggests. On the contrary it is satisfactorily
established by the minutes of the Vestry and its Finance
Committee, which have been produced to us, that the circular in
question was agreed upon on 24th September, before any candidate
had publicly announced himself—and more than six weeks before it
could definitely have been known whether or not a contest would
take place. Every member of the Vestry had a copy of the circular
sent to him on 10th October, and it was unanimously agreed to on
14th idem at a thoroughly representative meeting of the Vestry, in
public, at which fifty-five members were present.
Your letter implies either a want of knowledge of the Metropolis
Local Management Act, or that a school rate of a shilling in the £ is