CO129-094 - Acting Governor Mercer - 1863 [11-10] — Page 21

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First explanation, beyond the fact that "the threat of legal proceedings did issue (and very properly in terms of the Attorney General's draft notice) from your Department - a point that was not questioned; there is no reason to doubt, you do doubt, Mr Panncefote's statement offered at the Treasury that the money was in the 3rd Instant, and in terms of the notice over your own signature there was no necessity for offering it before; there are terms, however, I am to observe, are in direct contradiction of the Government notification of 2nd July last, published over and over in the Gazette for 3 weeks in the month of August; again, for explanation you should not have stated that you had "no doubt that the occupant of Lot: 145 was, and is included in the list submitted on the 2nd Instant to the Court," the matter being really irrelevant; but if you conceived it a fact to introduce it, it was necessary your duty to have ascertained the fact so as to place it beyond the doubt not only of yourself, but of the office by which the explanation was required, and this you might have done in five minutes from the documents in your own Office.

So much for your first explanatory paragraph.

In your next you mention an office (the Police and Lighting Rate Office) that does not exist, as the Rates in question are now payable under the Ordinance at the Colonial Treasury.

From your third explanation the only inference is that you signed a blank notice and omitted to exercise the most ordinary supervision of your subordinate to whom you entrusted the delicate duty of filling up a document, important from its being one of a series.