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bo to all intents and purposes groundless. I exonerated Mr. Lawson, and under similar circumstances would do so again. The settlement of the foundations was one of the matters dealt with in my report, but at that time the question had not assumed much importance, and we all thought (Mr. Lawson himself being the most positive) that the settlement had ceased altogether, or become so small as to be harmless. And I have already shown that at the time my report was written no one in the Public Works Department had the least idea that the foundations were not according to contract. The publication of my report in 1885 was unfortunate in one respect. Prom that date Mr. Lawson has systematically sheltered himself behind my shield. Ho says in effect, if not in words, " the fight is Blair's —not mine." I might enlarge on the sentiments that dictated this course, but will not do so. I do not think that any one will commend them, more particularly when we consider that, as a public servant, I could not fight at all. No matter how unjust the accusations or extravagant the statements that were made against me in the public prints, they had to go unanswered. Let me give you another instance of this disingenuousness of Mr. Lawson in the conduct of this case. Eef erring to the appointment of Mr. Brindley, he stated Mr. Brindley's appointment was made after a conference with me, and that the matter was put in writing in a private and confidential letter to me, dated the sth July, 1879. As I brought out in Mr. Lawson's cross-examination, that private letter did not contain a single reference, directly or indirectly, to Mr. Brindley. I may state here that the private letter was written with a view to preventing the appointment of another man who, it was supposed, might be a candidate for the position, and who was not considered suitable. No reference whatever to Mr. Briudley is made in this letter, yet Mr. Lawson brings the subject up in such a way as to lead to the inference that Mr. Brindley was appointed at my request. There is yet another personal statement that I wish to reply to. Mr. Lawson says that I insinuated that Mr. Brindley was a creature of his. I think that it is unnecessary for mo to roply to this further than to point out than in my opening statement, I said that there was a considerable friction between Mr. Lawson and Mr. Brindley ; and I could scarcely insinuate that Mr. Brindley was a creature of Mr. Lawson's if I believed that there was friction between them. Mr. Lawson also stated that a charge had been made that work had been "scamped," and that the inference from this charge was that the workmen, the Contractor, the Inspector, and himself had been guilty of barefaced robbery; that, he said, was the meaning of " scamping"—" collusion for the purpose of defrauding the public." lam quoting from the published reports. If my opening statement is read, it will be seen that I was particularly careful in abstaining from attributing motives for the deviation from the contract that we found in the foundations. The only use I made of this fact was to show that the bearing-surface of the building had been reduced to a serious extent. I did not hint or insinuate that anyone had benefited by this reduction. As to the question of bad workmanship, it is unnecessary for mo to tell practical men, who have had charge of works, that with the best contractor under the sun, bad work and " scamping" are acknowledged facts. No contractor that I over came across would ever expend money in making an extra good job while he could save money in making a bad one ; and on the best-conducted works in the world it may bo possible to find tilings that are not up to the mark, without the faintest suspicion of collusion between those who are supervising and those who are carrying out the works. Another insinuation that I would wish very much to answer, is the remark by Mr. Lawson that I coached Mr. Brindley. Mr. Brindley was summoned by me from New South Wales, and I naturally " precognosed " him, that is, I found out beforehand what evidence he had to give for the purpose of saving time in the examination, in doing which I simply followed the usual practice. I found out what he had to say, and I wrote it down, and asked questions upon it. To say that I coached Mr. Brindley is an insinuation of a most reprehensible character, both as regards the witness and myself. It is quite unnecessary for me to say that it is absolutely and entirely without foundation. The last point of this class to which I will refer is the publication of that private letter of mine, and the statement made by Mr. Lawson that the published letters had not been answered. When I pressed Mr. Lawson as to whether he considered the private letter an official one, I could not get a decided answer from him. He, however, admitted that the latter part of the letter (not published, which was purely Dunedin news and gossip), was not official. How then can ho consider that the rest of this letter was official ? Was I to place a letter containing private and trivial matter —gessip, in fact —on the files of the Public Works Department, to be kept among the public records as an important State document? The tiling is altogether too absurd to be further commented on. With reference to tiie answering of the letters, I pressed Mr. Lawson hard respecting his statement that he had not got an answer to that long report of his, which embodied the other two ; and when I showed him his own handwriting acknowledging the receipt of Dr. Hector's commentary on the letter, his only refuge was : " I did not get an answer from Mr. Blair, to whom the letter was addressed." Now, this position is equally absurd. To think that no one can delegate the answering of a letter to a third party is simply the height of nonsense; it would interrupt the whole course of business, public and private, if the man to whom a letter was addressed, had always to answer it. Mr. Lawson says that if he wrote me, and got a letter in reply from Mr. "Ussher, he would not consider that a reply at all. Now this is the height of absurdity. Are we for a moment to suppose that if I write a letter to the Commission, and tho Secretary answers, that I can stand up in the witness-box and swear that I did not get a letter from the Commission? Taking it, however, another way, Mr. Lawson's letter, was, as I have shown, a letter replying to Dr. Hector's report. Dr. Hector's report reached Mr. Lawson through me, and the reply went back through me to Dr. Hector. It would have been quite competent for Mr. Lawson to have replied direct to Dr. Hector, but that in order that I might know what was going on he sent the reply to me. Dr. Hector then sent another memorandum through me to Mr. Lawson, which was duly acknowledged. The correspondence is therefore complete. That is all I have to state in reply to tho personal attacks and misstatements that have been made. I shall now proceed shortly to review tho evidence that has been given. At the outset I laid down certain conclusions which I undertook to prove. I shall take these conclusions 21— H. 7.