I had already adjudicated and found to be such that on the 21st. I heard again at the Magistrates Office when Mr May Moting Assistant Magistrate informed Mr Cartt that the case of G. Luddell's nuisance had been referred for the Attorney General's opinion but that whatever that might be he would not make any order of removal under Section XI of Ordinance I after adjudication.
The Chief Magistrate M. Mitchell informed Mr. Beat that he distinctly declined summoning Uhting for any continuance of his nuisance. He grounds this refusal on his having dismissed the summons formerly granted in Sthting's case namely that section XI of Ordinance I in specifying the cases in which it is to apply is to be read "and" were inserted instead of "or" thereby defeating the intention of the legislature and making the Ordinance ineffective. He adheres to this course after it had been officially notified to him by His Excellency that the unanimous opinion expressed by the Legislative Council (both Chief Justice and Attorney General being present) was that the decision in question was against law, that Section XI is to be interpreted in its literal sense, and that every work whatsoever thereafter to be commenced, resumed, prosecuted or finished, in contravention of the Ordinance should be deemed a nuisance.
His Excellency, as you have from time to time informed me, has more than once made these derelictions of Magisterial duty the subject of admonition and reproof, but admonition and reproof, as the facts show, have been utterly fruitless and these Magistrates do not scruple to avow their intention to persevere in the same derelictions of duty and to disregard whatever opinions are intimated to them of the lawlessness of their course.
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It is therefore neither admonition nor reproof that I now ask from His Excellency, it is the removal of the obstacle opposed to the working of sanitary reform within this colony. The fact that M. Mitchell and Mr. May are the authorities to whom the enforcement of the Ordinances for securing the due administration of that reform is chiefly confided, each of them as a stipendiary Magistrate is in his own person a bench of Justices and in 99 cases out of 100 the bench before which complaints under the Ordinances are brought will be either Mr. Mitchell or Mr. May.
Both those personages are largely and notoriously engaged in building speculations or interested in their investments in this place. It is only as contractor for Mr. Hudson (a partner with M. Mitchell in Gilman Street houses, whether or not in the house in question I cannot say) that Soo-laineed the summons against Unterg and am now so fruitlessly seeking to obtain another.
You, His Excellency, are well aware that against Mr. May formally I have proceeded for a similar nuisance to that of which Mr. Duddell has been guilty. The cases are but illustrations of a general mischief. It should now be plain to His Excellency that if the Ordinances and laws for the regulation of public health and the safety of buildings and their inhabitants are not to remain henceforward a dead letter, it is not to me His Excellency must look, as long as the stipendiary Magistracy of Hongkong consists of persons whom every word of theirs convicts of being so entangled by pecuniary interests or partisan feeling with the wrongdoers, and so rendered powerless to bring a justice of the peace to justice.