not take the question up from selfish Considerations. Indeed I can truly say that I accepted the work firmly beleiving you wished me to and because it appeared to offer the opportunity I sought for of entering Public life. I am at present a very heavy loser and likely to remain so - besides which on the barest assumption I am taxed with maladministration and what not! I do not think that men who have studied the question as carefully as Pharazyn and myself are likely to have erred much in our views on so a plain matter of good faith as how best to carry out long outstanding promises when the means for fulfilling them in their original integrity have long passed away. And yet I know of nothing else - whereof I am challenged, nor can I combat a shadow. I feel certainly that fulfilling as I was a throughly invidious and disagreeable task I was entitled to very full support, and that Major Edwards has been allowed to gratify his predeliction for sitting on Commission upon very slender grounds. Whilst naming that gentleman I must refer to the Patea speech and the way in which I was coolly saddled by him with having given advice of a certain nature when the whole tenor of my opinions expressed and felt, pointed the other way - and when himself called to explain left it to be inferred (as I beleive it was inferred by the Govt:) that I had interfered