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 proceeding as gravely injurious to the public interest. As I did not get satisfactory assurance on the point I took occasion, on the next day the House went into Committee of Supply (the only occasion on which a Speaker can with propriety take part in a debate), to call attention to the stroke which was meditated. Mr. Barker, I said, was one of the very best officers in the public service, was, in fact, the pivot on which the business of the House turned, and his colleague a serviceable and trustworthy officer whom we could not well spare. Mr. Barker was a squatter, and a fierce partisan of the squatting interest, but he was besides a patient, reliable, and careful officer, in whose hands the accurate records of Parliament were safe. The Government relinquished the design of displacing these gentlemen. Later I urged, with some success, that a few of the proposed victims might be spared. I have forgotten most of the transactions by this time, as I make no doubt the persons served have also done, but a note of a little later date reminds me of a service I was able to accomplish in the interests of a woman of genius to whom the reader may remember I was under obligations twenty years before, the dear, genial author of "Tibbie Inglis."

Still the Council would not give way, and as a solution of the difficulty the Attorney- General advised that a deputation should be sent to London, to urge the Imperial Government to limit the obstructive power of the Legislative Council by an alteration in the Constitution. At a private meeting of