MR FISHER’S RESIGNATION.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1878, 13 April 1889, Page 3

MR FISHER’S RESIGNATION.

’Wellington, April 11.

In the course of an interview with Mr Fisher that gentleman said that the general idea that his resignation was brought about through a difference of opinion on the prosecutions under the Beer Duty Act was scarcely correct. There were much more serious disagreements than that. He was fit variance with the Cabinet on such important questions as the composition of the railway hoard and the peculiar treatment of Mr Kee, the English expert; the appointment of a successor to the late Mr Justice Johnstone; the behaviour of certain Ministers in the Gasparini affair; the Te Kboti expedition; the leasing of the Canterbury runs ; the public exposition by the Premier of his views on the question of laud nationalisation and pauper farms, and the necessity of proposing a modification of the property tax. He differed, too, from the Premier upon the uncalled for and unnecessary expenditure on costly surveys connected with the proposed divergence of the North Island trunk line and the Stratford-Taranaki route. That Ibeing the case ho could not concede the Premier the right to select a particular and much leas momentous question, wherein no political principal at all was involved, upon which to force his resignation. It was altogether a false issue. He had nothing to be ashamed of, and had done nothing which could not be defended in Parliament.

The Premier was also interviewed, and asked whether he bad anything to say on the subject of Mr Fisher’s resignation. On being told that bis former colleague had submitted to the same ' ordeal, he said : The only reason, so far as I know, for Mr Fisher’s leaving the Cabinet is the non - prosecution of the Junction Brewery Company. It was upon this I asked him to retire. The differences alleged as reasons for leaving are all new to me. I never heard from Mr Fisher any objection to the action of the Cabinet on any one of those points until t received his letter conveying his resignation. The Premier has written to the Wellington Post, stating that “no portfolio or seat in the Cabinet has been offered either directly or indirectly to any person since the Government was completed in 1889.”