a matter of such importance to place you sufficiently in possession of details sufficient to enable you to form a clear and unbiassed judgment as to the amount of credit due to those interested witnesses whose evidence has been laid before you without any proof adduced on their part to substantiate it: many of the assertions of these witnesses have been borrowed from the effusions of Colonial Newspapers (one of the Editors of which is a runaway firm), and have proceeded from disappointed and litigious persons, whose writings were never subject to any control whilst in China, and on their settlement in this Colony. All rules of Government were to such persons most irksome and offensive, and engendered a feeling hostile to Officers of the Government, which, fed by the malicious and unfounded statements uttered by the Press, led many otherwise upright and honourable persons to believe in assertions similar to those made by Messrs Gibb, A. Matheson, and W. Scott.
The Honble F. H. A. Bruce, late Colonial Secretary, and Mr. Sant Fournier, late Registrar General (the former of whom was lately in England and the latter is Professor of Chinese at King's College, London: but whose testimony does not appear to have been called for) could have given true and satisfactory evidence opposed