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Q. Do you remember LAWRENCE?
A.-Inspector LAWRENCE?
Q.-Yes. I remember him well, you remember he got two years' hard labour.
A. He was Inspector of Buildings.
Q-I don't care what he was Inspector of so long as he was connected with the department. He admitted before he got out of gaol that he took $2,000 in one single
case.
A.-I don't know the amounts, but I know he was in gaol.
Q.-Well, have you not known-let us say it was years ago-that there were men in the Survey Department who took bribes.
A.-No.
Q-Is it a fact, as I have just been told, that certain Overseers used to toss up
for their salaries at the end of the month?
A.-No; it is the first time I have ever heard it in my life. Jokes might have passed, such as "I will toss you up for my salary," but it was never meant.
Q.-Now I think you may set your mind at rest on one point. I don't think any one suspects you of taking bribes, but when you left the department in 1872 had you
idea would ever
you
go back to it?
any
A.-No, I never thought of going back again.
Q.-Well, now, all the other persons who have left the department and gone into private business, I think I may say without exception, seem to have a bad opinion of the Overseers and Clerks of Works. During the time you were keeping the Oriental Hotel did you have that same opinion, that the Overseers and Clerks of Works were, taking them altogether, a bad lot, open to bribes and so forth?
A.-No.
Q.-You did not hold that opinion?
A.-Certainly not.
Q. How is it then every one else who has left the Survey Department seems to hold it?
A.-I don't know, Sir.
Q.-Have you known yourself any case of any one taking bribes?
A.-No.
Q-Any suspicion of it?
A.-No.
Q.—And you know, of course, that it is generally talked about in the town since this case?
A.—I never heard anything more.
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