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honorarium for salary. I cannot view this transaction in the light of an economical disposition of public funds. With regard to the officers specified in Schedule B of your letter, imposed on you by the General Government. I am satisfied that a reference to the Parliamentary Papers will preclude you from detaching yourself at least from that very important phase of the question —the remuneration of these oflicers. The first Immigration Agent sent home was Mr. Fribcrg ; and for this officer's travelling expenses and capitation allowances the Government is wholly responsible, and you are exempt from from either praise or blame in the matter. But here your irresponsibility, as regards those named in Schedule B of your letter, ceases. The terms granted to Mr. IViberg were —passage money home, £80, and 18s. per day travelling expenses, and 10s. capitation allowance on each approved adult emigrant. It would nave been hardly necessary to have dwelt on this appointment of Mr. Friberg, as it was of such short duration, were it not that it furnished you with a precedent on which you undertook to fix the remuneration of Messrs. Birch, Seaton, and Farnall. I am ready to admit that the circumstances under which Messrs. Birch, Seaton, and Farnall were commissioned to you were such that it was almost impossible for you to decline to employ them; but with regard to their pay, the whole responsibility rests with you. The terms on which Messrs. Birch and Seaton were appointed were conveyed to you under cover of the Hon. Mr. Gisborne's Memorandum, No. 51, of 27th November, 1871, and are stated as follows in the enclosure (the Under Secretary's letter of 21st November, 1871, addressed to Messrs. Birch and Seaton) : —" The Government has not fixed the scale of your remuneration; but the Agent-General will be instructed to determine it for such services as you may perform, &c, &c. It is however to he distinctly understood that such payment will depend on the fulfilment of your duties to the satisfaction of the Agent." In your reply you inform the Government of the rate of pay you granted in the following words : —" Pending instructions from you, I have agreed to give them the same remuneration as you have given to Mr. Friberg, viz. 18s. per diem for travelling expenses, and 10s. for every statute adult emigrant selected by them and approved by myself." In this same letter you apprise the Government that you are of opinion that Messrs. Birch and Seaton appear to be labouring under some misconception with regard to the terms and conditions on which they were sent horne —although I cannot see how they could have misunderstood the terms of their appointments ; and you further state that the field of emigration was so fully occupied by your 120 local agents, that you experienced considerable difficulty in availing yourself of their services. To these statements you received an immediate reply, in terms most explicit. The Hon. Mr. Eeeves, writing on behalf of the Government, on the 6th of June, 1872, says, —" I have to request that you will pay these gentlemen on the same system as that adopted by you for other agents, viz., in proportion to the actual work done. The rate of remuneration will be left to your discretion, as you must necessarily be the best judge of the value of their services, and of the current rates for which you can obtain similar services in England. I must also ask you to determine whether it is for the public benefit that their services should be retained for a longer period than, say, one year; and in the event of your decision being adverse to their continuance, you are authorized to terminate the engagement." lam not aware that you took any notice of the above instructions. While the responsibility of originally appointing Messrs. Birch, Seaton, and Farnall rests upon the shoulders of the General Government, the fixing of their pay as clearly rests with you. I wish I could leave the matter here. The rate of pay being up to this time in accordance with that granted to Mr. Friberg, objection could not be taken by the Government to the amount. But what was the course pursued by you in reference to these gentlemen ? Instead of terminating their engagements if you considered them unnecessary, or of paying them according to results as directed, I find that at the end of last year, without reference to the Government, you more than doubled the pay of each of them, by raising their several salaries to £700 per annum, and, to crown all, you distributed a sum of £460 amongst them as back pay for a year and a half previously. You have done this whilst you have been denouncing these officers as costly and useless. I shall not pursue this branch of the subject further, beyond condemning your attempt to transfer the liability of incurring this expenditure of £2,100 per annum from yourself to the General Government. The appointment of the Eev. Peter Barclay I shall pass over, with the admission that you were bound in the terms of your instructions to employ him. In his case the salary you have granted is moderate, and as you have expressed your approval of the services he has rendered, he does not come within the category of wholly unnecessary officers. In another Memorandum I shall have occasion to allude to Mr. Mason. I have only to add, with regard to the appointment of Mr. Smith as Shipping Agent, that if he is the same gentleman you despatched to look after the emigrants on board the " Edwin Fox" when she was disabled, I think, judging from the attention and diligence he displayed at Brest in looking after the emigrants, that you have succeeded in engaging the services of a very excellent officer. I am not a little surprised to find in the schedule of officers imposed on you by the General Government, the name of Mr. W. L. Buller, and to learn that his salary of £400 per annum forms a portion of the expenditure of £3,700 per annum which you allege has been incurred by the General Government without any reference to yourself, by the creation of offices in which you had no voice, and which, in your judgment, " were in the majority of cases wholly unnecessary." An opinion has for some time prevailed that you were to some extent a consenting party to Mr. Buller's mission to England, and that opinion is borne out by a reference to the official records, where it is stated, both you and Mr. Buller being then in this Province, that you had agreed to utilise his services while in England in a secretarial capacity. I might quote in corroboration of your being a party to the detention of Mr. Buller in England, your earnest recommendation in favour of an extension of leave to that gentleman, addressed to the Government on the 2nd of May, 1872, and your telegram of 9th April, 1873, requesting to be allowed to retain his services at the rate of £400 per annum until the end of August, 1873. In the face of these documents, you will scarcely maintain that Mr. Buller has been attached to your Department against your will. Indeed, I might add that you have retained him