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Mr. Smith: I am inclined to think that there will be any amount of nasty things said. The Chairman: If you mean that they will be said here, I can assure you that they will not. Mr. Smith: Well, we should safeguard ourselves, anyway. Hon. Mr. T. Duncan: We have started the case, and taken evidence which reflects on Dr. Findlay. He wishes to rebut that, and we have a right to hear him; but I think that when we go that distance it would be better to have a lawyer from the other man also. Mr. Smith: I agree to that, and I will propose that Mr. Jones be allowed to be represented by counsel. I also suggest that we hear what Dr. Findlay has to say, and be guided by it as to what action the solicitor shall take later on. The motion was carried without dissent. The Chairman: This meeting will now adjourn until next Friday.

Wednesday, 28th September, 1910. Hon. Dr. Findlay made a statement and was examined. (No. 3.) Mr. Jones asked permission to correct his evidence given at a previous sitting of the Committee, and to say that on the 13th April word was brought him that his case would be considered in Cabinet. The receipt of a cable from England brought him to see Sir Joseph Ward. On the 22nd April he saw Sir Joseph, who told him he had telegraphed to Mr. Carroll to come down from Gisborne. I/on. Dr. Findlay: I shall confine myself to facts within my own knowledge, and to a reply to the reflections which have been made upon myself personally. My first connection with this matter arose in the Legislative Council on the 21st August, 1908, and 1 refer you to Hansard of that year, Vol. 144, page 279. That reference is my first answer to Mr. Jones's reflections upon nrvself. You will find on page 13 —the bottom of the page—and on page 14 of the evidence you have taken some observations by Mr. Jones on what 1 said in the Council. He said, " Dr. Findlay made a long speech condemning my action entirely, although lie said subsequently that lie never did," and that " he wound up his speech, after condemning me all through, by saying that it was unconstitutional to come to Parliament and ask it to interfere in a case of the kind. For that reason the motion should not be passed." Now, in other parts of Mr. Jones's evidence lie relied upon those observations to justify the statement that 1 blocked, or refused, or obstructed an inquiry, and, further, that my reason for obstructing the inquiry was one of a personal kind, and not one of public duty. 1 will reply in detail to the observations which have been made conveying these innuendoes. In making the speech referred to I was simply discharging a public duty —I was doing what I ought to do. You are aware that the case was tried in the Court of Appeal, and it was public property on the 21st August, 1908.' ' The evidence given in the Court of Appeal and the decision of the Judges who sat in the case disclosed to me and anybody else reading the papers that this was a case in which a mortgagor owed a mortgagee and the propertywas finally sold through the Registrar of the Supreme Court, and so the petitioner lost it. The sale was, beyond question, a regular sale by the Registrar of the Supreme Court. Mr. Jones came before the Court of Appeal, and the appeal was disposed of by the Judges. So, sir, when Mr. McCardle moved this motion, to the words of which I must draw your attention, I had in my mind the fact that this appeal to Parliament by the mortgagor was in reference to property which had been dealt with by a valid process of law; that this motion was therefore a direct attack upon property which the Court of Appeal had decided was validly acquired. This was the motion : "That, in view of the facts—(a) that Mr. Justice Parker, in England, intimated that in his opinion the High Court of Justice in England had no jurisdiction to entertain a suit for the redemption of the Mokau leaseholds, the property of Mr. Joshua Jones; (6) that the Court of Appeal of New Zealand has expressed a contrarjr opinion, refusing leave to appeal; and (c) of the grave injustice suffered by Mr. Jones in that connection—the Government should introduce legislation to give Mr. Jones relief." Now, both from the observations of the one who moved that motion, and from the motion itself, what was proposed was this : that the Government of this country should introduce legislation to invalidate a title that the highest Court in the country had declared was valid and properly acquired — that, in other words, the Parliament of New Zealand should be invoked to invade your property or anybody else's property after a Court of justice has given its decision. I had no knowledge of Mr. Jones at the time. 1 said I was opposed to any motion to interfere with and overrule the decisions of the Court of Appeal at the instance of every defeated mortgagor. I propose to weary you by reading the speech I delivered on the occasion. My first answer is to the suggestion that I blocked Mr. Jones's petition because of private reasons, and not because of public duty. The Hansard report of my speech on the Hon. Mr. McCardle's motion states, "The Hon. Dr. Findlay (Attorney-General) said the Council was probably entitled to ask that the Government should as early as possible give some expression of its intention in regard to this matter. The course was open to Mr. Jones to petition in the ordinary way, and have his case heard fully on that petition. He understood that some such step had been taken, but, if not, it was still open to Mr. Jones to have the rights or the wrongs of the matter fully investigated and ventilated, and some recommendation made regarding it by a Committee. On general principles, however, he thought it was an exceedingly unwise precedent for Parliament to step in in the way suggested, and interfere after the highest Court in the country had decided the legal rights of the parties. If once Parliament began to take the side of a defeated litigant—and a defeated litigant had always some justice on his side, or thought so—to restore to him the property he had lost, after the fullest investigation by a Court, they would require a special Parliament to attend to nothing else; and, speaking for himself—because this matter had