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returned to Wellington, I have laid the whole correspondence regarding your resignation before him, including my proposed answer, and am now in a position to reply to you. For the sake of convenience, I have numbered the paragraphs of your letter, and in this reply shall refer to them by those numbers. 1. Eequires no further reply than to say that I am quite satisfied to have my letter recorded. 2. Eeply to this paragraph is included in the answer to paragraphs 10,11, and 12. 3. With respect to your protest against what you term my unreasonable desire, as manifested in my letters, to hasten your retirement from office, I beg to say that such a charge betrays a complete misapprehension of my motives, and will be sufficiently met by a bare reference to dates. The difference between you and your late colleagues which formed the cause of your retirement arose out of the brewery prosecutions, with respect to which it was found that you had acted in direct opposition to the decision of the Cabinet held in my absence, and also in direct opposition to my own opinion, which you subsequently telegraphed for. These incidents occurred during the first week in March, and I can hardly see that I could have been blamed if, in face of such behaviour on your part, I had acted with greater promptitude. But it was not until the Ist April, three weeks later, that I wrote the first of the letters of which you complain. An unprejudiced critic would surely admit that this three weeks' delay gave you ample time for consideration. After receiving my letter you waited forty-eight hours before you gave me any reply, and then on the 3rd April you informed me that absorption in departmental duties and not want of courtesy had caused a day's delay in answering my letter. When I found that you considered it right to continue your departmental duties as Minister of Education, and that absorption in them was considered by you as a reasonable excuse for not taking my letter into consideration, I felt that your idea of the constitutional duties of a Minister occupying the position you then did with regard to me was so much at variance with mine that I had no alternative but to ask you for a definite reply by the Thursday night, especially as I had reason to think that you had in contemplation the possibility of taking no definite step for a week or ten days. On the 4th April you wrote, in reply to mine of the same date, informing me that you would give me a definite reply on Saturday, the 6th. I thereupon took no further step until the time which had been named by you had expired. You then go on and refer to two most important reasons, which you give under sub-headings (1) and (2), which required most careful consideration before you took any action. (1.) You state that your Education Bill, to which you had devoted many months of care and thought, was in the printer's hands ; that you wished to see it finally completed, in justice to yourself as Minister of Education, and that therefore you thought you were entitled to this delay. I must remind you that you never asked for any delay on this ground, or hinted to me in any way that you were superintending the printing of this Bill, and I was quite unaware of the fact that the Bill was drafted until I saw a synopsis of it published in the Evening Post. This publication was a most irregular and unwarrantable proceeding on your part. The Bill was prepared by direction of the Cabinet, and, as I understand, entirely drafted by the InspectorGeneral ; it was therefore your duty to have submitted it to me as Premier for the consideration of the Cabinet before you made it public in any way. Your further action upon this Bill was also most unusual. lam informed that the Bill was drafted by Mr. Habens when at Te Aroha; that it was enclosed in a registered envelope to the Education Department, and made an official record of that office ; that the draft Bill was then forwarded to you; that you had it printed ; that after obtaining a sufficient number of copies you gave a written order to the Printer to distribute the type, that you left not even one printed copy for the use of the office, and that you have not returned to the office the original manuscript of Mr. Habens, which is an official record. It would seem, therefore, that it was. as Mr. Fisher you wished to get the Bill finished, and not as Minister of Education. I may add that the written order which you gave for the distribution of the type was not carried out, and the type is still standing. (2.) With regard to your second sub-heading, relating to the constitutional view of the case, I will refer to that when dealing with the next two paragraphs. 4, and 5. In these paragraphs you suggest that it is more in the interests of future Cabinet Ministers than for your own sake that you have been so deliberate about acceding to my request. I am glad to be able to assure you that no precedent is violated or established by my recent action. There is no doubt that constitutionally the Premier possesses the right of at any time asking a colleague to resign, and of recommending the Crown to dismiss him if he refuses. At the same time it undoubtedly rests with the Crown to determine whether it will dismiss a Minister whom the Premier may have advised to be dismissed, or accept the resignation of the Premier. As a matter of fact, in this case, when I failed to receive your resignation as promised by Saturday night, I did advise His Excellency the Administrator to dismiss you on Monday morning from all your offices, and His Excellency signified his acceptance of my advice as to your dismissal. Upon receiving your resignation late on Sunday night, I recommended that your resignation should be accepted, and His Excellency was pleased to approve of that recommendation in place of the one for your dismissal. My reason for recommending His Excellency to dismiss you was that on Saturday I discovered that you had made, during the last few days you held office, sucn an extraordinary use of your ministerial position that I did not consider it right you should remain in a position that enabled you to deal with public records in an improper manner. I found that you had caused to be printed at the public expense for your own use the file of papers relating to the Junction Brewery prosecution, the file relating to Eamilton's case, and a selection from a file relating to Mr. Jackman. In each of these cases, not only were the papers printed, but also the official and ministerial minutes. You had two hundred and fifty copies of each file struck