THE DIVERSION OF LEGACIES
[To the Editor of THE SPECTATOR.]
SIR,—Sir Archibald Sinclair has signally failed to answer a simple question. In my former letter I set forth the facts stith regard to a valuable group of bursaries in Banffshire which the Educational Endowments Commissioners propose to seize and dissipate on irrelevant and trifling purposes. I asked Sir Archibald whether he regarded this proposal as in accordance with the Parliamentary injunction to the Commissioners to have regard to the founders' intention and the interest of the locality.
Sir Archibald evades the challenge. He takes refuge in general considerations which appear to him to justify the appointment of a Commission on Endowments. But it is not the need for a Commission that is in question : it is the policy that the Commission have chosen to adopt. The charge against them is twofold : that they have recklessly interfered in cases where no interference is necessary ; and that they have flagrantly disregarded the injunction laid down in the Act under which they exercise their powers. These things have happened not in one case only but again and again all over Scotland. Hence the intensity and width of the indig- nation which Sir Archibald finds it so hard to understand ; hence also the absolute necessity, as Sir Robert Horne has recently said, that the powers which the Commissioners have so abused should be brought to an end by Parliament when opportunity offers in December.—I tun, Sir, &c.,
W. DOUGLAS SIMPSON.
The Chaplains' Court, The Chanonry, Old Aberdeen.
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