(10)
and under the arrangements which have hitherto prevailed, the proper person to receive the Government grant, he not being the Treasurer for the Committee or authorized by that body to receive or apply the money.
2. That the proper person to receive the Government grant is the person appointed by the Committee of Management for the time being to do so.
3. That the lessees are trustees for the shareholders in the way and for the purposes I have already fully explained, only; that is to say, the land and building are vested in them subject to the rights, powers and privileges of the beneficial owners.
4. That Mr. Kyrie having retired from the Committee has no voice in the management of the Institution, and that so long as the Committee keep within the covenants of the lease he has no right to interfere with the internal concerns of the Society.
5. I see no necessity, at any rate at present, for the Committee to take steps to supply the places of those lessees who are dead or who have left the Colony. Such steps would involve an application for a new Crown Lease, in the granting of which difficulties would probably be made. The proper course for the Committee to adopt is to call upon Mr. Kyrie and the representatives of the deceased lessees to execute a deed declaratory of the rights of the shareholders.
6. The regulations contained at page 10 of the Committee's report are not such a breach of the understanding come to between Mr. Rennie on their behalf and the Government as to justify the latter in withholding payment on that ground.
The terms on which the grant was made are contained in Governor MacDonnell's minute of the 3rd October 1868, and Mr. Rennie's reply of the same date. They are as follows:-
Minute by His Excellency the Governor.
"Mr. Austin, This memorandum omits to answer my principal inquiry, which I shall now put in plainer words. Museum and Library to be managed on liberal terms, and, if so, on what?
"Is any subscription to be necessary to entitle any member of the Community who behaves himself quietly and is decently dressed, to visit the Museum and Library and even to read in the latter place, as is the case in Melbourne, where one of the noblest institutions in the world is free to all the world? If perfect freedom of access is not to be allowed, as is probable, what are to be the restrictions?
"R. G. MACDONNELL.
"3rd October, 1868."
Reply of the City Hall Committee.
"The whole of the arrangements upon which the City Hall is to be managed have not been definitely fixed, but there never has, I believe, been any thought of having the admission to the Museum and Library otherwise than perfectly gratuitous, and open, as His Excellency states, to all well-dressed and well-behaved persons.
W. H. RENNIE,
"3rd October, 1868. On behalf of the City Hall Committee.”
His Excellency therefore expected there would be certain restrictions, but he wanted to be quite clear that those restrictions would not include payment, and Mr. Rennie's reply is so framed as to remove any doubts dwelling in the Governor's mind on that subject. The question as to payment was the particular one present to the minds of both writers, and that point being cleared up, the Governor did not seek to bind the discretion invariably left to such bodies as this Committee, in making such reasonable rules as to order and the like, that they thought fit.
Now differences of opinion may be of course entertained as to the advisability or otherwise of some of the rules of admission originally adopted by the Committee, but in view of all the circumstances of the case it is idle to contend that they did not satisfy the conditions of the grant. They were made it appears after consultation with members of the Chinese Community, and it is quite within the grounds of probability that they better consult the real feelings and wishes of that vast majority of this curiously exclusive people who are unaccustomed to the society of foreigners, than the modification subsequently made.
In judging of the action of the City Hall Committee it is as impossible, as it would be unfair, to lose sight of the fact that in their own institutions (take, for example, the Tung Wah Hospital, which received and receives assistance from funds of the Colony) their aim has been to exclude foreign assistance or interference. Action of this kind indicates the existence of feelings to which the Committee were justified in paying deference.
However this may be, these rules were for many years accepted by
Page 29
Dec.
(11)