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Mr. Wilford here makes a direct statement of fact. I am instructed by the Department that whatever any officer may have said to Mr. Wilford, no officer has every reported such a thing to the General Manager or to any superior officer. Mr. Wilford further says,— I wont to the Minister of Railways and told him privately that [ had been informed of the condition of some of the railway rolling-stock of this country ; and. as 1 did not intend to take the responsibility, T asked him to have proper inquiry made by some one outside the Railway service in order to see who should bear the burden of responsibility, if responsibility there was. The Minister has had inquiries made and has carried out his promise thoroughly, but these inquiries do not satisfy me, because they are from a prejudiced source. Let us, for example, take it that some other Department had to deal with a question as to the inefficaey of its methods of carrying on its departmental work : would Ihe Minister in charge of the Department expect to satisfy the country and the House if he were to ask the men who were claimed to be wanting in their attention to their duties to report on themselves as to the amount of attention they paid to their duties ? Obviously, such a position would be absurd. If the Commissioner of Police had complaints made to him by outside people that his sergeants did not do their duty, would the Commissioner of Police be satisfied with reports from the sergeants concerned ? And if the sergeants wrote back to the Commissioner and said they had done their duty, would that be an end of the matter so far as that Department was concerned ? In my opinion, that is not the way to settle the matter. T hope it can be found that there are no grounds for one's fears ; but one of the gentlemen who made representations to me on the point has been known to me for twenty-seven years : he has held good positions in this country, though in the Railway Department, and, as he said to me, " Mr. Wilford, even if I have to go before a Committee of Parliament and give my evidence, lam prepared to do so. You can call on me if you want to ; and if you get an answer from the Minister stating that no such thing exists 1 will come to your aid, because I have only a few more years to go as far as my superannuation is concerned, and I am prepared to take; any risk there is." He told me seriously and quietly that he would be ready to come forward and prove his statement. That is why T brought the matter up. That is the Hansard report of the proceedings on the Minister's motion to lay the report on the table of the House and have it printed. 1 do not know whether the Hansard report as i( appears in Hansard, is always verbatim. I have some reason to think that it is not: I mean that members make certain alterations sometimes in their speeches. But this is how Mr. Wilford's speech was reported by two Wellington newspapers, and the reason I mention this is that we all know that there are very few people who trouble to read Hansard, but nearly all the people read tin- newspapers. The report of the New Zealand Times of the sth August reads, — Mr. Wit.foru said that he was not satisfied at all with the report. The suggestion that the rolling-stock was not in order was interpreted as a reflection on the Engineer who had charge of the rolling-stock on the railways, and what happened ? As soon as a member of Parliament made such a suggestion, it was referred to the officer concerned, and he immediately set about preparing a defence of himself. It seemed to him a farce that if any question was raised in regard to a Department the report of the officer concerned was to be regarded as settling the matter. He had suggested that Mr. Marehbanks (an expert formerly connected with the Manawatu Railway) should be asked to inspect the rollingstock and forward his report to the Minister, and not to allow the onicials to give their answer and accept that answer as final. They could not expect an officer to plead guilty to inefficiency, callousness, want of thought, or neglect of the public interest. But the public and the House would accept the report of Mr. Marchbanks or any other competent man. He had had statements made to him by men who were responsible for the inspection of somo of the rolling-stock, who declined to carry the responsibility longer, and asked him to pass it along. An Important Railway official had said to him that even if he had to go before the bar of the House and give evidence against his superiors, he coidd be called upon to do so if any Minister said that the state of affairs complained of did not exist. Now, see what this report conveys to the general public. It conveys to the general public (hat the responsible officers of the Railway Department are not to be believed, and it implies that there is at least a probability of their having been guilty of inefficiency, callousness, or want of thought, or neglect of public interests, and that they could not be expected to plead guilty to any such charges. Ido not say that that was the way in which the speech was delivered : I do not know whether it was or not. Tt may be that Han-mrd is more correct than the reports in the newspapers, which of course are condensed; but my point is that that is the way in which the matter is represented, not necessarily by Mr. Wilford, but the way in which it is represented to the public. The Evening Pout of the same date has the following report:— Tn the course of the discussion that followed, Mr. T. M. Wilford criticized the method of obtaining these reports . To his mind it was a farce if the answer of the departmental officer concerned was to be accepted as the last word. It was not likely that an officer was'going to plead guilty to a charge of carelessness and inefficiency. The report in the Post is therefore much the same as the report in the Times, but even if we disregard the newspaper reports altogether and take the Hansard report, there remains the fact that the reports of the responsible officers have not been accepted. This, then, was the position : not only has it been alleged that the rolling-stock has been allowed to deteriorate, and to deteriorate into a condition which is detrimental to the public safety, but what I call a serious allegation has been made against a number of responsible officers of the Railway Department. In the first place, as T have said, it was a member of Parliament who asked for the Commission, or for an inquiry somewhat similar to a Commission. The Railway officers thought that by giving the fullest information they would be able to avoid the necessity for a Commission and its consequent expense, but after the criticism of their reports in Parliament it was their turn to press for a Commission, and they considered that it was their duty, both to the publio and to themselves, that they should demand an inquiry. They did press for an inquiry; they pointed out that it was extremely unfair to them and most unsatisfactory to the public that the matter should be left where it was. If the allegations which have been made with regard to the condition of the rolling-stock are true, and if the reports which have been made by responsible Railway officers are found not to be reliable, then the matter is a serious one, and would require careful attention from the proper authorities. If, on the other hand, it is found that there is no foundation for the allegations which have been made, and that the Railway officers are men — as one expects they should be—of integrity who have made fair and honest reports, then it is fair and proper that they should be cleared, and it is due to the public that these matters should be inquired into and cleared up. The position, then, was that although the departmental officers had, in the first place, desired to avoid the necessity for setting up a Commission and the expense

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