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connected with persons and with societies for dealing with the poor and criminal classes. I had a relative in the London City Mission when I was born, and that caused me m my youth to take an interest in the poor and the criminals, and when I entered the ministry I was placed in close touch with the London City Missions again, in dealing with the poor and criminal classes taken from the streets of London, who were brought down and distributed in the circuit where I was working; since then, at times, I have had a great deal to do with refuge work and that kind ot thing Soon after I arrived in this colony, many years ago, I was brought again into touch with that kind of work, and, taking an interest in it, and dealing as I do with the social and political questions as touching these classes more especially, I have had a good deal of this evidence which has been submitted to the Commission brought to me at different times; and m the course ot my work an ex-detective or policeman came to me with some very serious charges against inspector Pender and the police of Christchurch, and in the interests of the people for whom I was working I watched very closely Inspector Pender, and the Police Court, and the police, so I had my eye on them, watching, as I thought, in the interests of the poor and criminal classes. Some years afterwards my health broke down in the ministry, and my superintendent came to me and said there was a secretary wanted for a Mission doing a kind of work he thought I took a great interest in—the Prison-gate Mission in Christchurch—and he would apply for the position of secretary tor me I was then permitted to visit the Lyttelton Gaol, interview each prisoner coming out, otter the prisoner a home for a fortnight, and do all I could to find them employment. Now, I want to say that, from my point of view, while I have noticed sometimes in the conduct of the police some things of which I have disapproved, my opinion from close observation is this: that, taken as a class of men in the colony, their conduct will compare very favourably with the conduct of any other classes of men that you could find. If you were to have a commission to inquire into the conduct ot the medical profession I could say a great deal of the conduct of some of them; or of ministers ot religion ; or "of advocates of temperance. There have been " black sheep " amongst them all; but, taking the police as a class, my opinion is that their conduct compares very favourably with the conduct of most other classes of people in the community. What I want to show more especially is this ■ that if the Police Force of this colony is to be rendered more efficient, some of the laws ot the colony must be altered; and, more than that, there must be encouraged in each city where there is a large gaol a prison-gate mission with which the police shall be encouraged to co-operate. 396. You suggest that has something to do with the efficiency of the police ?—Yes. 397 As a body ?—Yes. Have you noticed in a recent trial here for murder that the chiet gaoler stated here that a man came out from gaol with Is. 6d. or so in his pocket. Now, if you started as I have often started to find employment for a man just out of gaol with a conviction or two against him, and only Is. 6d. in his pocket, you would find it a very difficult matter to obtain employment for that man. It is bad enough to be started in this colony with Is. 6d. and a chance of finding employment before you have spent that money, without having a gaol conviction the back of it; and my opinion is that it is as much the duty of a policeman to prevent crime, as it is to apprehend a man who has committed a crime and throw him into gaol for it. 398. That is the ground you have for saying it would tend to the efficiency of the police .'— Yes 399. It would tend to prevent crime ?—Yes. I hold that a considerable number of persons with whom the police have to deal here, and men who have spent a great deal of time in gaol, are not at heart of what we would call the criminal classes. The men are turned out of gaol, some of them penniless, and the man who becomes a murderer afterwards, it is said, had only Is. 6d. in bis pocket There is no prison-gate mission in this city, there is no prisoners' aid society, and perhaps the man has not a friend in the colony. Now, what can he do ? He must go and steal, or starve ; and he is apprehended by the police and thrown back into gaol as a thief or a vagrant. If what we want the police for is to diminish crime in the colony and to keep the citizens in order, then it seems to me that the police should be required to work with some city mission of some kind, a prisoners' aid society, or call it what you like; and if we had such a society, and could get from the police such information as they could give, and they were required to give it, a great deal could be done by these means to render the Police Force very much more efficient than it is at present. 400. Do I understand that you do not suggest that the police should have a prison-gate mission attached to their Force ?—I presume from this copy that the Commission is to report to His Excellency, and through this Commission I, as a subject, am now submitting to His Excellency certain recommendations which I think would be likely to increase the efficiency of the Police Force in the colony. And I ask you to ask His Excellency to recommend to his advisers the need of subsidising missions, with which the police shall co-operate, and by which the police shall be rendered more efficient by giving information to this society. If you keep a man outside gaol under the control of the police he is marked, he is branded ; but if you put him in the hands of a mission composed of representative people of all churches, and not of the churches, asthe case may be, they can deal with him; but the Police Force should co-operate with them and give them what information may be necessary. Then a great deal will be done. In fact, in Christchurch, of all the men who came into the mission of which I was secretary during the nine months not one of them went back into gaol while I was in Christchurch. Inspector Pender was in Christchurch when I was there, and will bear me out; and I am satisfied, that can be done here. Then, as to bringing into operation the laws of the colony, I say that important parts of some of them are dead-letters at present. We will take the question of enforcing the licensing laws of the colony, or the laws relating to alcoholic liquors. I have, of course, held since I began to take an interest in this question that the laws touching the liquor question cannot be enforced. It is impossible to enforce some parts of the laws that we have at present to any appreciable extent, and, when they are enforced, the object aimed at. is generally never accomplished, for this reason: that, instead of inflicting a punishment upon the worst men engaged in the liquor trade, the punishment is generally inflicted on the best men in the trade.