My dear Sui,
Hong Kong. Feb/12th 1857
With very great regret have I remarked the many difficulties under which you have laboured since your arrival in this Colony. Indeed it appears to me that from the outset you have suffered from being unable to obtain in time sufficient or reliable information as to the duties of your appointment or the circumstances of the Colony, to which you were about to come. In the first place the Salary attached to your post was barely sufficient for your decent support. From experience of two years spent in this Colony as a professional man I feel myself competent to form an opinion on this matter, and I can say that the idea I had formed before leaving home was that I should not find it a cheap place, the fact is the place is even more expensive than Calcutta and as compared to England. I say that an outlay of £120 per annum in London gave one half more comforts, substance and enjoyment than £350 could here. To meet these expenses there was held out to you the hope of private practice, that which is at best but a matter of speculation was in your case quite out of the question.
As the multiplicity of duties thrown on your shoulders were too much for you, I am perfectly satisfied that the only connection you had was getting deeper in debt every day, and the inevitable consequence would be that you would ruin your way had you continued in the post at which it was impossible you could pay limited time thereby reducing it to a scale you had to defray out of your very limited means, which any one to proceed without assistance would find it absolutely impossible (and so would you) to perform all the duties in your own person. Indeed having tried for some time for the ordinary and necessary relaxations of life, you found that private practice did not afford you time to turn to it, and that it was not open to you without personal discomforts (not to use a stronger term) to which no gentleman could submit but with great personal discomfort.
I put aside and found my opinion of the propriety of the step you have taken on the broad grounds above stated.
Yours faithfully,
J. J. Hickson
RG, Jack By Md.
My dear Mr. Hickson,
Seaman's Hospital Feb 11:1857
Henry Kingsmill
Your Faithfully,
I remain,
My dear Sir,