H.—22

4

mended that the fine of £200 should be reduced to £100. This recommendation was entirely spontaneous ; I had never communicated with Mr. Glasgow on the subject, verbally or in writing. 14. The recommendation to fine the Junction Brewery £100, in addition to the payment of duty, £100, was equally Mr. Glasgow's recommendation. But I wish it to be clearly understood that in neither of these cases do I desire to escape from my responsibility as Ministerial head of the department. Ministerially, I am aware that my adoption of Mr. Glasgow's recommendations rendered me responsible for them. I merely mention the matter in this form to show that I was acting in accordance with the views of the responsible officers of the department, and not thwarting them in any manner by ignoring or setting aside their recommendations. 15. And as with the responsible officers of the department, so with the Cabinet. The Cabinet decided that the penalty in Hamilton's case should not be mitigated. I acquiesced. The Cabinet ordered that Mr. Glasgow's recommendations in the Junction Brewery cases should be ignored, and the cases should proceed. I acquiesced, and the cases are now proceeding. 16. It appears to me unnecessary to say more upon this subsidiary question, which forms the basis of your request that I should resign my seat in your Ministry. As, however, you state as a reason for that demand that the Government feel that they cannot in Parliament defend my action in these matters, I ask you in what respect the voice of Parliament can legitimately be invoked in regard to these brewery prosecutions. I and the departmental officers have been overruled in what we considered the proper course of dealing with them. The whole of the cases have been, with my concurrence in the decision of Cabinet, referred to the doubtful decision of the law courts, and I submit that what took place in Cabinet on the question of whether these cases should be proceeded with in this manner cannot form a legitimate subject of parliamentary discussion if Ministers are loyal to each other. In fact, Parliament could know nothing of the details of the Cabinet procedure, and the only subject of discussion that could arise in the House would be that of the ultimate procedure which was resolved upon in opposition to my views, but in which I concurred in deference to the opinions of a majority of my colleagues. In this matter, therefore, I was not in the position of requiring the support of the Government to justify in Parliament any ministerial action on my part of questionable or doubtful propriety. 17. Upon the greater public questions to which I have above referred there were serious divergences of opinion. Confidently, I always looked to time to soften any asperity of feeling which these divergences might have engendered, and that we might continue to work together for the good of the colony as being in unison on so many other subjects : but this hope has been supplanted by a disappointment which is only equalled by the strength of my regret. 18. This I have to say m conclusion : that, though I have differed with the Cabinet on many large public questions, I am not conscious of ever having added to its difficulties internally or externally. 19. It is clear, however, that I cannot any longer act with the Government, and I therefore place my resignation in your hands, to be forwarded to his Excellency the Governor, but with this distinct understanding: that I did not admit that in any circumstances connected with the excise prosecutions in Wellington I have in any degree diverged from my strict line of duty in the position I occupied, or given you or the Cabinet any cause to complain of, or be dissatisfied with my action. It is not because I feel myself in any degree in fault, or on any personal grounds, although I might challenge your authority to address me as you have done in the name of the Cabinet as a whole, and might complain of matters so vitally affecting me being discussed in my absence and settled by a small majority of my fellow-Ministers; but because in the present position I feel convinced that I can no longer continue to act with you for the benefit of the colony, or in accordance with the views of a large number of members of the Legislature who have hitherto accorded their support to the Ministry, that I adopt this course, and retire from a position which I have for some time past felt was becoming a false one, considering the wide divergences of opinion developed amongst Ministers on questions of principle, and the strong personal differences which have arisen between certain members of the Cabinet, but in which, happily, I have not been concerned. Wellington, 6th April, 1889. Geo. Fishee.

Sir, — Premier's Office, Wellington, 9th April, 1889. I have the honour to inform you that I have received a communication from Mr. George Fisher, in which he professes to give an account of the circumstances that led to his resignation of the offices held by him in the Ministry, and amongst other things he gives an account of two interviews which he had with you in December last, upon his return from Melbourne, relative to the brewery prosecutions. Mr. Fisher states : " Immediately upon arrival in Wellington I saw Mr. H. D. Bell, Crown " Solicitor, and asked him to explain the nature of the case. He then informed me, and I learned " for the first time, that it was proposed to prosecute several breweries, which he named; but he " said the case against Staples's brewery was only a small one and he proposed not to go on with "it. I instructed him then that if there were to be prosecutions they must be general and im- " partial, and that there must be no exceptions—the great and the small were to be prosecuted alike. " In my own office on the same day (14th December) I gave the same direction to Mr. McKellar. " Subsequently, as the result of a further conversation with Mr. Bell, he, by letter, instructed " the Collector to take two cases, as test-cases—Hamilton's and Edmonds's—these being the only " cases in which informations had been then laid. I minuted my agreement with that direction " upon the letter." I shall be much obliged if you will be good enough to state precisely what did occur on the interviews in question, particularly whether Mr. Fisher instructed you that, there must be no excep-