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PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

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tion as could be afforded by the officer in question, with whom, as your Adjutant, you were in almost daily official communication.

You reply, that you could not apply for information to Captain Blunt, because he had been a Member of a Commission which had put forth a Report, in your opinion, "condemnatory of the Police Department." It is sufficiently obvious that this reason. other if a valid one, would have equally precluded your applying for information to any Member of that Commission, at all events (even if an exception were made in favour of Mr. Antelme, as being the writer of a separate Report), this objection would have rendered it impossible for you to apply for information to Mr. Robertson, who is equally responsible with Captain Blunt for a Report which both have signed, and of which, as a matter of fact, Mr. Robertson was, to a considerable extent, the author.

But you have felt (and in his Excellency's opinion have very rightly felt), no scruple in requesting information from Mr. Robertson as to what passed during the sitting of the Police Commission; nor can the fact of his having beer also a Member of that Commission supply any better reason why you should not have equally applied to Captain Blunt; whilst if, as appears from your letter now uuder acknowledgment, you anticipated that your letter of the 24th of August, would be regarded as confidential by the Royal Commissioners, it became doubly your duty to ascertain the facts with the most careful accuracy, before making a statement which was so likely to operate to the prejudice of another, and of which (at all events for a considerable time) he would have remained in ignorance.

I also pointed out to you, in my letter of the 26th ultimo, that after the explana tion afforded by Captain Blunt, which appeared to his Excellency clear, simple, and satisfactory, it was your duty to withdraw imputations which were shown to be unfounded, and to express regret for having too hastily made them.

In answer to these remarks you observe, that you were naturally led into the mistake of supposing that your Order No. 28 of 1870, had not been produced before the Polite Commission, by the misprint to which reference is made in Captain Blunt's explanation, and that you had never seen the Annual Report on the Police Depart- ment for 1871, and were consequently unaware of its contents and of the prominence therein given to the order in question. Nevertheless, you consider that "conscience and honour render it impossible for you" to retract any of the statements you have advanced.

His Excellency has remarked with surprise your statement that you had never seen the Report on the Police for 1871. If there be any document with the contents of which the Inspector-General of Police might be expected to be perfectly familiar, it is the Annual Report upon the condition of the force under his command during the previous year, more especially when that year is one during which he has himself been absent from the Colony.

It was at all events in the hands of every member of the Police Commission, and is quoted by name by Mr. Robertson in the Draft Report prepared by him.

The special manner in which in the Report on the Police attention is invited to the Order No. 28 of 1870, is a sufficient proof that although after the lapse of many months the production of this particular order may naturally have escaped Mr. Robertson's recollections, he was fully cognizant of its existence and contents at the time when the Report of the Police Commission was prepared.

His Excellency has observed with still greater surprise the conclusion at which you have arrived. Far from demanding a persistence in assertions, shown to be inaccurate, it appears to his Excellency that "honour and conscience" imperatively dictate the immediate withdrawal of allegations which can no longer be sustained.

Your ignorance of the actual facts acquits you of any intentional misrepresenta- tion. But you are now in a different position from that which you occupied when your letter was written.

Your attention has been called to the Report which you had not seen, and the misprint of which you were not cognizant has been pointed out to you.

Under such circumstances it appears to the Governor that the only course which can properly be adopted, is to admit that a mistake has been made, and to express regret for having made it.

your

hands.

His Excellency, therefore, cannot consider your letter to be satisfactory, or to contain that frank disavowal of the charges implied in your letter of the 24th of August, which Captain Blunt is justly entitled to require at

I have, &c. (Signed) EDWARD NEWTON, Colonial Secretary.

The Inspector-General of Police.

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(Registered No. 259.) Sir,

General Police Office, October 26, 1872. IN reply to your letter No. A/1855 of the 16th instant, I regret to find his Excellency does not consider my communication of the 30th ultimo satisfactory.

case.

With reference to Captain Blunt, I must again refer you to my letter to the Royal Commissioners, to my disclaimer that it was far from me to impute unworthy motives to anyone, and to my assurance that it was never my intention to go beyond the latitude accorded to the defence, or to constitute myself thereby an accuser. My statement that Captain Blunt, as a member of the Police Inquiry Commission, did not draw the attention of his colleagues to the file of Orders (ride letters of Messrs. Antelme and Robertson), while he caused to be produced certain documents which he caused to be specially "picked out" (vide letter of Mr. Seed), is admitted; and I cannot but maintain that his having published one of my Orders in another document to another address, and on another subject, seems to me to have no bearing on the The Police was on its trial, and if the head of the Department considered it his duty to have all orders and memorandas carefully "picked out" likely to tell against his predecessors in office, and to cause them to be printed and go forth to the world as annexures to a Report, signed by himself, condemnatory of the Department of which he was the acting head, he ought certainly, in my opinion, in fairness to those absent, and under him, to have equally drawn the attention of his fellow Commissioners to the other side of the question. He certainly did not appear to have done so, and I would specially bring under advertence the care noted in paragraph 11 of my Report, where, to justify an irregularity on the part of the Police in 1868, the Commission, of which he was a member, quoted an order issued a year subsequently (August 2, 1809). Surely I had a right to expect that my locum tenens would vindicate me in so glaring a misquotation, the effect of which was to throw blame on his Department and his absent Chief. Instead of any attempt at vindication, however, Captain Blunt, I find, at the time when the Report was not yet written, by his own showing, removed a most important file put in by another officer, in which were to be found several orders that could exonerate the Department, such file not being his property, but the property of the Commission. He did so, moreover, it would appear, without calling the special attention of his fellow Commissioners to the fact that evidence was being removed without a copy being left. The fact, therefore, of its separation from other orders and "picked out memoranda, which it would manifestly modify, destroys much of the importance of the judgment of the Commissioners, which could only see one side of the case.

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From this I conceive the action taken does not exonerate Captain Blunt for the importance of the document in question, as evidence was derived from the position from which it was removed. The Police Inquiry Commission's Report, with its annexures, was published to the world, had been commented on by the Press in England and India, and the force branded as 'corrupt and unscrupulous." An influential body, the Aborigines Protectionist Society, were fully cognizant of it before even I left England, at a time when I, and I believe Mr. Fraser, a member of the Commission, had not received copies; and I certainly cannot admit that any other publication, short of one having the same prominence as Mr. Seed's selection, oan be considered as vindications of his predecessors, or of his Department, by the Acting Inspector-General before the Police Inquiry Commission.

At the time I made my inquiry from Messrs. Seed and Robertson, Captain Blunt was on leave; and by the time he came back, further acquaintance with the attitude he had adopted towards me in my absence, unmindful of the fact that to me he mainly owed his position, led me to infer that he would be the last person to consult when I or my Department were called on for defence. If the Police Inquiry Commission, each member of which it appears from your letter had a copy of the Statistical Report, failed to note the annexure, it cannot be wondered at that though I had previously read the Annual Return, I should have failed to have remarked the annexure, particularly as I was so fully occupied in preparing & Report on that of the Police Inquiry, and had not Captain Blunt's Return under my eyes; the more especially as it certainly never struck me, as already stated, that the missing general order (a copy of which, on parenthèse, might have been easily procured, rather than have mutilated the file), boing published as an annexure could possibly constitute a vindication of me through my orders before the Police Inquiry Commission; nor do I see that the Statistical Return figures as one of the printed annexures to that Inquiry, which went forth with but such documents as were ordered to be "picked out."

As to Mr. Robertson's Draft Report alluded to, I was unaware that he had