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A small plan of the City on which are indicated all the various sites which have been selected or considered suitable for the new Post Office, and which are now abandoned in favour of that which I have mentioned.
The matter was first dealt with by the Committee appointed by Sir William Robinson in 1894 which recommended in its report, dated November 1896, that the Post Office should be erected on a site on the Reclamation. From the appendix to the report, specifying the conditions of competition subject to which it was proposed to invite designs from Architects, it will be seen that the site, which I have marked *A* on the accompanying plan, was the one selected.
Subsequently, Messrs. Aston Webb and Ingress Bell, who were appointed Architects for the New Law Courts, selected site "A" as the most suitable for the Courts and recommended that the Post Office should be erected on site "B".
6.
This recommendation was referred by His Excellency the Governor to the Public Works Committee, which decided that the existing site, marked 'C' on plan, was more central and suitable for the purpose than site *B* and would afford the desired accommodation if the area at present occupied by the Courts were added to it.
7.
The Committee's proposal, though good in many respects, is open to serious objections, the principal being that excessive delay and inconvenience would be caused in the carrying out of the work.
8.
To explain this, I must emphasize the fact