9

H.—2o

Indeed, it was prepared by him, in accordance with his own understanding of the case. Why Mr. Ward could have troubled himself to find out where the petition was prepared I cannot understand. It is not true that I acted as Minister of Justice. I only acted as any other Minister might have done in forwarding the petition. Had I acted as Minister of Justice I should have required him to report to me, and not to you direct. It is quite absurd to suggest that the merely formal operation of sending the petition was inconsistent with my position, and especially so when the course about to be pursued by me had been approved by the Premier, who was acting for you. Nothing can be clearer than the statement I made in my letter as to the capacity in which I wrote. I fully explained that what I was doing had been approved by the Premier; and Mr. Ward's constant reiteration of the untruth in the face of my statement and your letters is suggestive rather of the partisan's than of the judicial mind. Mr. Ward makes a point of my forwarding a copy of the petition instead of the original. If this is irregular I can only urge the sufficient excuse that if the allegations in the petition were correct the Judge had been misinformed at the trial, and had therefore acted under a misapprehension. I took a little trouble to find out the true state of affairs, and I ascertained, what has now been admitted by the Judge, that his statement of facts when sentencing Mr. Christie was not correct, and therefore, in my opinion as well as that of others, the defendant was unjustly suffering. I own that I was anxious that the matter should receive immediate consideration, and that, if the petition should prove correct, there should be no unnecessary loss of time in relieving him. I should in any other similar case be actuated by the same feeling. Besides, this course had, after the Premier consulted the officers of the department, been approved of by him. There was the probability of the Judge leaving Christchurch before the petition could return from Wellington, and therefore the chance of a prolonged delay before his report could come to hand. As to the matters upon which I asked the Judge to report, I know of-no rule which ought to have prevented me from asking his opinion upon any of them. The Judge had had the matter argued before him, and I only asked him to give you the benefit of his views, so as to help you to a decision. If Mr. Ward's view, that there was no appeal, was the correct one, theu it was essential that the law should be discussed in the light of the several matters referred to in my letter. The suggestion that I wished the information for my own purpose is ludicrous. Mr. Ward's reference to the grounds upon which it was sought to procure a writ of habeas corpus is absurd, and is only the outcome of suspicion, unfounded on fact. The particular ground to which he refers, and in respect of which he suggests that I improperly desired the advantage of his opinion, was not at the time, nor for some time afterwards, known to me. It was, like most of the grounds upon which the rule was moved for, inserted by Mr. Chapman upon his own responsibility. Mr. Ward makes the statement that he thought at the time he wrote his private letter that the matter as regarded Mr. Christie was at an end. In view of his entertaining this belief, it is still more difficult to find an excuse for his having written the letter and the addendum to the report. When the official excuse fails surely he had no right to convert himself into a private fcraducer of Mr. Christie. Mr. Ward's statement that I asserted that there was a right of appeal is unwarranted. I see nothing in the papers to justify such a statement. When I asked him to report why he had not afforded facilities for granting an appeal I acted upon information which had been given to me. As a matter of fact, the only reason for bringing the case before you at that time was that there was no right of appeal, and whatever my private opinion might have been I never questioned publicly or to you his decision in this respect. Had there been an appeal, and had the imprisonment been suspended, you would have had no right, pending such appeal, to interfere. You will see by reference to my memorandum, written in Oamaru, that I justified the request of the petitioners for your interference on the ground of Judge Ward's decision that there was no appeal, and the new facts which had been disclosed. It struck me that the Law Officers might raise the question that an appeal was the proper course, and that, therefore, delay might take place. I pass over the reference made to Mr. Christie with this remark : that it is a pity that Mr. Ward cannot, in a calm way and by reference to the evidence and the law, justify his sentence instead of dealing in vituperation. I have perused the evidence as reported, and fail to see anything therein to justify his statement that Christie committed any deliberate embezzlement. On the contrary, he asserted his right to receive the money, and Mr. Ward's statements of the law, that as between the company and Mr. Christie's client the company were not bound, is not, in my opinion, correct. It is elementary law that a man or company is bound by the action of an agent, and nothing was more clearly shown than that Mr. Christie was the agent of the company, and that he was authorised to deal with the securities in globo, and to receive payment of moneys, although they might be represented by bills. Mr. Ward's statement of the law is not, in my opinion, indicative of careful consideration of the case. A perusal of the newspaper reports will furnish you with sufficient facts upon which an opinion on the above matters can be obtained. Mr. Ward's opinion that a man's application for consideration is to be viewed to his detriment in the light of transactions outside that of the one upon which he is found guilty cannot be justified by reference to the principles which regulate the conduct of English Judges in all criminal cases. To show that Judge Ward, when under softer and more humane influences than seem to move him when dealing with Mr. Christie, recognises these principles I might mention the case of Bruhn, upon whom a concurrent sentence (five years for arson and two years for larceny) wag. passed by him. The circumstances of this case and the nature of the application are known to you. I might also remark that the correspondence which some little time ago passed between Mr. Ward and Ministers shows that he can recognise the inconvenience and impropriety of such a rule as he wishes to apply to Mr. Christie's case. Mr. Ward lays down a rule as to the mode of arriving at the defendant's motive which is not warranted by authority. Any novice in law knows that the motive must be gathered from a view of 2—H. 20.