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Q. What did you do with it?
A.-As soon as Mr. PRICE sent it out to me I copied it out in the usual official form, and filed the draft, and sent the original upstairs to the Colonial Secretary's Office.
Q.-You say the office is full of Overseers, but surely you don't permit men who are waiting about to read correspondence passing through the office at the time?
A.-Certainly not.
Q.-Then how can it be seen by the Overseers?
A.-There are many instances in which you are called away, especially as corres- ponding clerk.
Q.-But surely you shut your book. It would be the greatest carelessness to allow anyone to read your letter books.
A.-But they are not kept in letter books. They are sent out on half-sheets of foolscap and at the end of the year they are bound together.
Q.-But it would be almost incredible that this important letter should be read by anyone in the office, unless you mean to say Overseers are in the habit of reading all the letters that pass through.
A.-No, I don't mean to say they read a single letter.
Q.-No, but the character of your replies to Mr. LISTER gives that impression, because you said in reply to the question how it could have been made public that the room was full of Overseers and other people waiting about, and the suggestion is that the letter was read then. My knowledge of an office in which copying goes on is that it is clearly impossible, except by dereliction of duty or carelessness on the part of the gentle- men in the office, that anyone can read your papers.
A.—I don't mean to say any particular Overseer did look at these papers, but there are times when you have to be absent from the office, and the papers are lying on your desk.
Q.--But do you mean to put this as a feasible suggestion, that one particular note could have been taken up by an Overseer and read if you had taken proper care of it in your office?
A.-You
be read.
ou may be as careful as you possibly can be, and yet a letter like that may
Q.-You think it likely any one would go up to your desk and take up ณ letter
and read it?
A.-I don't mean to say the letter did get out in that way.
Q.-But that is your suggestion.
A.-I mean to say if any information was carried from the office that was the medium.
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