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P.S. I understand the European Shops in the Colony are shut up. Vessels could not leave the Port for want of clearance for their accounts. In fact there has been no business with all its inconvenience & losses to many parties concerned. This has grown out of a generally diffused belief that a day of Public Fast & Humiliation is officially appointed.
I don't know that I ought to interfere in respect to this rather delicate matter, especially as I find it impossible to obtain any definition of the relative position of the Civil power and the Church of England in many of our Colonies. While in Australia & N. America absolute religious equality seems to be established. In the W. India Islands (at least the older Colonies) a relation nearly approximating to that existing in England is recognized in some Acts of Parliament - in the Royal Instructions & in other authoritative documents. If in Hong Kong the Ch. of England is to be regarded as the Established Church it seems to follow that
Sie W. Molesworth
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