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doing his duty, although now he would take a somewhat different course in the light of his present knowledge. So far as the sending of the telegram went, Mr. Eose had been unable to quote any regulation showing that Postal officers were prohibited from sending telegrams to members of Parliament. The Chairman said that there was no bar to Mr. Willis sending a telegram to a member of Parliament every day of the week if he wished to do so; but there was a bar against his giving information from any political or personal motive. Sending the telegram did not constitute the impropriety, but rather the contents of the telegram. Mr. Willis (continuing) : The telegram related to this : that it was desirable Mr. Taylor should press his motion for a public inquiry, in order to clear the honour of himself and his colleagues. This had become involved through the Auditor-General's inquiry not establishing the existence of the voucher they had sworn to having seen. In conclusion, he would only repeat that he considered he was giving this information for the public good, and that he was not aware that he was committing a breach of any regulation by so doing. He would also call attention to the length of his service—sixteen years—and to the fact that his record had been a good one, as Mr. Eose had admitted. He would also like to point out that the alleged breach was merely a technical one. The fact that it referred indirectly to the Premier did not make the matter more serious, in his opinion, than if it referred to the commonest person in the land. Mr. Willis (continuing, to the Chairman) : The word " charge " in the telegram referred to the charge made by Mr. Fisher on information he and others had supplied to him. (To the Board) : So far as they were concerned, the "charge" had nothing to do with the Government. He knew that Mr. Fisher had made a charge against the Government, and that Mr. Taylor had moved for a public investigation, so that they (witness and his colleagues) might prove the truth of their statements. This telegram was to ask Mr. Taylor to press his motion for such an inquiry. Mr. Taylor came in as a representative of the four men involved. He himself had been one of Mr. Taylor's constituents; he was not sure that he was now in his district. He had been in the same Volunteer corps as Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher was captain, and witness lieutenant under him. When Mr. Fisher brought up this matter first he only asked for information. Later on the matter developed into a charge against the Government. He had seen the voucher between the 9th January, 1904, and the time of the Seddon-Taylor case in December, 1904. He became possessed of the information re the voucher through Mr. Larcombe's calling his attention to it. At the time he thought the voucher indicated a shady transaction —that there was something behind it, something that was not open and aboveboard. I thought the voucher perfectly right, but the wrong consisted in the fact that Captain Seddon was not competent to perform the service. Certainly he (witness) did not think the money had been wrongfully paid to Captain Seddon, apart from the question of his capacity to do the work. He thought this payment had been really made to Captain Seddon for work he had really done, but that he was not a proper person to employ for that work, because he was not competent. If he had not been the Premier's son he would not have been employed. In his opinion it was suspicious that the services were performed in Wellington and the payment made in Christchurch. Since that date he had seen other vouchers which he was quite satisfied were indefensible from a taxpayer's point of view, and some time after he had seen this Seddon voucher, when Mr. Fisher (who was a personal friend) had become a member of the House, he had supplied him with information in reference to the matter. He did not intend that Mr. Fisher should rely on that information, but gave it to him in order that he might trace the matter elsewhere. He had not thought for a moment that Mr. Fisher would act solely on the information he (Mr. Willis) had supplied him with; and he gave the information to Mr. Fisher, simply and deliberately, to put him "on the tracks," and to enable him to bring up the matter in Parliament as to whether Captain Seddon was a fit and proper person to reorganize the Defence Stores—not as to whether he had been paid the money. He could not say how the matter first cropped up in conversation. He knew that Mr. Fisher was an Independent Liberal, and therefore opposed to the present Administration ; but he did not consider this fact. He was not one of Mr. Fisher's constituents, but simply an intimate friend. His object was not to enable Mr. Fisher to formulate charges against the Government. There was no necessity for Mr. Fisher to have brought this matter up in the House at all; he could have communicated with Mr. Seddon by letter. If he (witness) had seen a voucher for the salary of, say, Chief Postmaster, and came to the conclusion that this official was wholly incompetent to occupy the position, he (witness) might think that the best course was to act in the manner he had done. When he became an officer in the Post and Telegraph Department he did not give up all his rights as a citizen and as a taxpayer in this colony. He had a perfect right to demand an inquiry into the proper payments paid by a company of which he was a shareholder. As a private citizen he had a right to comment on payments made. He did not claim the right to attack any officer, or the Minister, or anybody else, through the information gained in the performance of his duties, but he did claim this right: that when he saw a large sum of money paid out of the public funds to a person he considered incompetent, he had a perfect right to supply information anent the matter to a member of Parliament, who was for the time being one of the public trustees. He had not been particularly anxious that the matter should be " ventilated " until Mr. Fisher had brought up the matter in the House. Then he was certainly anxious to support the charge that Captain Seddon was incompetent. He certainly thought himself able to judge of Captain Seddon , s competency, and he thought 75 per cent, of the people of the colony would claim the like ability. He knew that Captain Seddon's name would appear on the estimates, and that members of Parliament were elected for the purpose of attending to these matters. He considered it his duty as a taxpayer to interfere in this matter. He was not talking about Captain Seddon's salary, merely about his ability to perform certain services. He had not been the first to communicate this information to Mr. Fisher. Mr. Fisher had questioned him. He