Invalid Excuses.

His very departure was an act of mutiny. His official biographer states that he went "nominally on leave of absence." The leave must have been very nominal indeed, for there is no evidence that it was either asked for or granted. All the evidence is the other way. Another and equally authorised biographer states that his term of office had come to an end. He was appointed for no fixed term. Unaware of his departure the Secretary of State continued to address him as if he were still in New Zealand, and he was expressly charged with having left the Colony prematurely. He simply wanted a holiday and took it. The pretext was his mother's failing health. Eighteen years ago (in 1890) a high Chinese official applied to the Court at Pekin for permission to resign the government of his province and return to his native place in order to nurse his aged grandmother. A reason that was at length, after more than one application, held valid in ancestor-worshipping China could have no force in ancestor-eating New Zealand. It must still have had some force in England, and the Duke of Newcastle, in defending the derelict Governor against attack in the House of Lords, urged the fatal illness of his mother as a valid excuse for his departure, and disarmed opposition by mentioning that he had arrived in England too late to see his dying parent.