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H.—22

held on that afternoon you led the Cabinet to believe that Mr. Hamilton's fine was to be reduced to £100, in accordance with an agreement entered into between Mr. Bell and Mr. Jellicoe (Mr. Hamilton's solicitor). You also informed me, by telegram of the same date, that "Brewery prosecution against a man named Hamilton had resulted in an infliction of a penalty of £100." The object of the telegram was to induce me to agree to your compromising Gilmer's case upon the payment of £150, including £100 for unpaid duty. The actual fact, up to the time of your sending me that telegram in Hamilton's case, was that he paid £200 into Court: the further reduction of £100 was as yet only in your mind. It was impossible for me to judge by your telegram that you, without reference to me or your colleagues, intended to recommend the Governor to reduce the penalty to that amount. I replied, asking you to take no steps in Hamilton's case until my return; yet, notwithstanding this, on the sth March you recommended the Governor to reduce the fine to £100. Fortunately the Governor only approved this recommendation provisionally, asking my opinion upon the subject, and, upon being informed that the Cabinet disapproved of the reduction, His Excellency was pleased to cancel his conditional approval. How you can have thought it honourable to have so misled me as to the facts of Hamilton's case, when using his case as an argument to induce me to consent to the non-prosecution of Gilmer, and the imposition of a small fine in lieu of prosecution, I am entirely at a loss to understand. 15. Here you take credit for also acquiescing in the decisions of the Cabinet. As I have already shown, you cannot be said in any true sense of the word to have acquiesced at all. You resisted to the utmost of your power, and were successful in two cases, in the prosecutions against the Junction Brewery ; and it was only when I took the matter out of your hands that you acquiesced, as you call it, because you were unable further to resist. You are mistaken when you say that the Cabinet ordered that the recommendations made by Mr. Glasgow should be ignored. As I have already stated, Mr. Glasgow made the recommendation to which you refer, upon Mr. Gilmer's letter, after the Cabinet which directed the prosecution rose, and not before it sat, and in ignorance of its decision to prosecute Mr Gilmer. 16. In this paragraph you ask in what respect the voice of Parliament can be legitimately invoked in regard to these brewery prosecutions. I should have thought your experience would have made this question quite unnecessary ; but, to remove any doubt in your mind, I may say that it would have been invoked in the usual way by some member of Parliament impeaching the conduct of the Government for showing favouritism in regard to the brewery prosecutions; and it must have come out upon inquiry, if not in debate, that you had from the beginning persistently determined to protect a personal and political friend, because he was your friend, from the consequences of fraudulent acts. Certainly it is not a matter that would have required any special action on the part of the Government to bring before the House, as you seem to suppose. 8, 9, 17, 18. I am treating these four paragraphs together, because they all deal with the general question of your alleged differences with your colleagues, and the increasing difficulty which you say you consequently felt in continuing to co-operate with us. If you had for some time past been troubled by this feeling—if the conviction had really been growing upon you that your position was gradually becoming a false one—we have all very serious cause of complaint against you. For never, either to me or to any other of your colleagues, did you mention a word about these difficulties ; and, while allowing us all to suppose that you were still on friendly terms and in substantial agreement with us, you Were showing your boasted loyalty to us by distrusting us in secret, and consulting political friends outside the Cabinet on matters about which the Premier should have been your first confidant. Avowed allegiance, secret distrust, relieved by an occasional consultation with "the man in the street"—this appears to be your ideal of Cabinet loyalty. Of course I am not denying that there were no differences of opinion between you and me, and between you and other members of the Cabinet, but what I say is that they were not more serious or more marked than the ordinary differences which inevitably arise between independent men who attempt to act together; and we were all of opinion that they had as they arose been amicably settled, and that the settlement had been cheerfully accepted by you. If we did not think with you that the " asperity of feeling " they had occasioned would be softened by time, it was because we were not aware that any such asperity had ever arisen. And certainly none of us had the slightest suspicion, nor did any word of yours give us any cause to suspect, that any of our differences were estranging you from us, or were making you feel that your position in the Cabinet was becoming in any sense a false one. You are mistaken in supposing that any Cabinet meetings were held to consider your case in your absence. The only meeting of the Cabinet which took place in reference to this matter, from which you were absent, was one to consider whether the Junction Brewery was to be prosecuted or not, and you were not summoned to that because you had told me positively that you would not again meet Mr. Hislop in Cabinet upon the subject, and begged me to excuse your attendance. 19. Your last paragraph has been met by implication already; but a short recapitulation by way of conclusion will make my answer to it more complete. The position you pretend to take up is this : On several important public questions you differed from the Cabinet or some of its members. These differences made you think of the advisability of resigning, but you retained office out of deference to the opinion of friends outside the Cabinet. The same differences also made your colleagues anxious to get rid of you ; and at last they were glad to seize the pretext of a disagreement about some " trumpery " brewery prosecutions for turning you out of office. You were asked to resign accordingly, and complied, on the distinct understanding, however, that it was not on account of the brewery prosecutions, but because of the other differences referred to that you consented to retire. To this my answer is as follows: We were not aware that you took a serious view of any of these so-called important differences until after you had been asked to resign for another reason. We had not taken such a view ourselves; and, if we had, it is absolutely ludicrous to suggest that