1.—17.

82

[■T. G. WARD.

arrangement without first having the whole proposal in writing, and it receiving the concurrence of the whole Cabinet. T always recognized that the difficulties surrounding the Mokau land were very complex, and I would not verbally promise to go on with any such proposal. m D A nri S 8 T' c ° nversation with Sir James Carroll he said, « This is a very good thing Mr. Treadwell; Mr. Jones's interest can be bought under a certain section." f put the pro' posal to you, sir, before you went to Invercargill, to grant me an extension of the leases and you said there would be no difficulty about that, and that you would have 46,000 acres on which to put tenants. You may not remember it. Sir James Carroll said, " Mr. Treadwell this is all right. You draw up a telegram for me and I will send it to Sir Joseph Ward, asking him to give me authority to give Mr. Jones a letter agreeing to these terms, subject to the approval of Parliament. Mr. Treadwell wrote the telegram to you, and Sir James Carroll signed it in my presence and sent it away to you. This is, I think/what the Committee want to get at and I have asked the to get the telegram produced here-the original of it-and I think you have answered the Chairman by saying that it is in the Native Department ?-If such a telegram were sent to me it will be on record. I cannot remember receiving it. 'it is pretty certain that I could not have agreed, however, to any proposal of the kind, as if I had either you or your representative would have been advised. I am quite certain I would not have dealt with such a proposition by telegram. 25. You did not answer it because you were hurrying back on account of the King's death and then you had a Cabinet meeting?-I want to say for the information of the Committee that on broad lines the administrative part I took on behalf of the country was this Tat from a legal standpoint I considered Mr. Jones had no interest; that as far as the country was Ton cerned we wanted to have that land settled, and that if we could purchase the Native interests and get the land State-owned I felt that, from the long connection Mr' Jones had with H and without knowing the rights or wrongs of the difficulties he had in the Old Country, that if it w«e poSSS without injury to the country, to give Mr. Jones a lease of a portion of the minerals to enabk him to try and recoup himself I was favourably disposed to that course. I have not at any time gone to any one about the Mokau troubles. Mr. Skerrett saw me, and discussed a possible cS the Natives might have for a very large sum against the Assurance Fund in connection with compensation for the loss of the land. I wanted to get over all the legal difficulties and o 1 of various kinds before I attempted to do anything for Mr. Jones. That is the position T took from the beginning, and if a telegram were sent by Sir James Carroll to me, as is n Z suggested and I had replied to it, I would not have agreed to the proposal, because the stand T had taken rands r oTclaim a s S *" Gw ™ eilt d ™ of «* complications in connection with the Mokau _ 26. Mγ statement is that I saw Mr. Treadwell write out the telegram, and Sir James Carroll sign J and send it away Tne impression on my mind was that I looked you anTsir Jam" Carroll as the two Ministers controlling this matter, and the authority you had togiye him to sign a letter for me so that I could cable to England the acceptance of the terms. T hould like ay w T7m be P™ cannot help you in the matter of your impressions. I can only say what I believe to be true, and so far as the cable you showed me from some one in the Old Country is concerned I say again that I was of opinion that it was a matter in which the Govern ment could not in any way interfere. My reason for saving that is that we were not the owners' of the land, and were not m a position to say we were going to <ret the 1-md from thl VT who afterwards raised their price from that/offered orffll* and it resolved Ttself S T position that we might have to pay thirty shillings for a sovereign the 1910 2 Llh W i the 22nd June., of the Natives. I tLt ££ lit *•%£% ZS^ in a position to claim whatever the values of the leases were in the Compensation CouTt f That the Crown should make a grant to Mr. Jones of the minerals on and unde the bock and X him an area of the surface, that area to be determined by the Crown." [See Exhibit LI IT am free to admit this : that you came back from Invercargill in the " Tutanekai »■ ? ' 1 posal made I could not agree to it in any way whatever, and I did not agree t t fn Tγ " P T far as my memory goes, is that, the Natives having raised Z amount to a pric^tharleTouW