D.—No. Id,

I remember your remaining in town, on one occasion, for many days, waiting to receive your back pay from Wellington. I do not suppose that the Government will consider you entitled to the professional fee of two guineas per diem for time lost in that manner. Time spent in the preparation of the sketch map can of course be legitimately charged for professionally at the- same rate as the field work. I have, &c, W. Bullee, H. C. Field, Esq., Wanganui. ' ■ Eesident Magistrate.

No. 2, Mr. Coopeb to Mr. Buller, E.M. Sic,— Colonial Defence Office, Wellington, 26th July, 1870. I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your letter of the 19th instant, and to inform you that the Defence Minister has approved your recommendation with regard to the non-payment of Mr. Field's professional fee during the time he was in Wanganui, &c, and as Mr. Field is now off pay, the question of continuing him at contract work will remain in abeyance until after Mr. Hales' report has been received, when it will be considered. I have, &c, G. S. Coopee, W. Buller, Esq., E.M., Wanganui. Under Secretary.

•. • No. 3. i Mr. Buller, E.M., to the Hon. W. Gisboene. Sic, — Eesident Magistrate's Office, Wanganui, 23rd July, 1870. I have the honor to forward, for the information of the Government, correspondence between Mr. Field and myself, and a copy of my instructions to Mr. Hales, in the matter of the MangawheroTaupo road works. I have, &c, W. Bot/ler, The Hon. the Colonial Secretary, Wellington. . Eesident Magistrate.

Enclosure 1 in No. 3. Mr. Field to Mr. Bulleb, E.M. Sib, — "Wanganui, 18th July, IS7O. I duly received your letter of this day's date, and need hardly say I feel much surprised and hurt at its contents. lam so, because lam conscious of having deserved such totally opposite treatment, having from first to last done my very utmost to expedite the works and save expense on the Mangawhero-Taupo Road. I have toiled at the work and gone on with it in the face of difficulties which I caii safely say would have caused any other engineer in the Colony to throw it up altogether, or at least to ask leave to discontinue it till he could carry it on under more favourable circumstances. Only the interest which, as being in a manner its sponso:*, I naturally felt in the work, induced me to persevere with it under such adverse circumstances as havo lately attended its prosecution ; and those who have been with me can say whether or no I have shrunk from any labour or personal inconvenience by encountering which I could hasten its completion. When you were kind enough, to offer me the post of engineer to the work, and inquired on what terms I would undertake it, I not only abstained from making any extra demand in consideration of the seven weeks I had spent in exploring the country without remuneration, but named a rate of pay less than is usually charged by engineers and surveyors for their services. It was not at my request, or by my own wish, that I was appointed Paymaster, and my constitutional dislike to handling other people's money, and having to render formal and complicated accounts of it, would have led me at once to decline to act in such a capacity, but for my desire to further the work in every possible way. I have never come down to town unless compelled to do so by business arising out of the work ; and on the only two days on which I have remained in town after that business was completed, 1 have abstained from charging for the time, notwithstanding that the detention arose in the one case from illness and in the other from my having lost, on my way home, a pocket-book containing papers connected with the paymastership, which I sought for, and found next day. It appears to me perfectly clear, therefore, that I am entitled to be paid for the time consumed ia town, or in journeying to and fro, on paymastership business, as the Government could never be justified in saddling me with extra work, involving several weeks' time in all, unless they were prepared to include it in the general terms of remuneration, or some other special ones respecting it had been agreed to between us beforehand. Tour memory has misled you when you say, " I remained in town several days, waiting to receive my back pay." If you reflect a moment, you will recollect that I came to town as Sub-Paymaster, to draw the money for which a requisition had gone down a fortnight previously, and which was wanted to pay the men, who were clamouring for their wages, but which had not been forwarded. Again, for time spent in going to and fro, and in town, for the purpose of furnishing returns or information io the Government, I consider myself clearly entitled to be paid. Unless the Government were prepared to pay me for such time, the papers connected with such subjects ought to have been

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