"months leave of absence Commencing "on the 23d instant to enable you to "proceed to Europe and submit your Case "in person at the Colonial Office - and The Colonial Secretary further states, "His Excellency will be pleased to Submit your name to the favorable Consideration of The Right Honorable The Secretary of State "for the Colonies."
In Compliance with the directions Contained in the letter from the Colonial Secretary, I beg respectfully to state my Case and request you will have the goodness to bring the same to the notice of the Right Honorable Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, and hope you will be induced to take a favorable view of my melancholy case;
I have been in the Public Service of the Colony of Hong Kong 14 years and four months, and that in the Department, the duties of which require frequent exposure to the Sun and weather, to which other Public Servants in that Colony are, from the nature of their duties, some much less, and others not at all exposed.
It is distressing for me, in order to state my case with justice to myself, to be obliged to make allusion to the fact, that the gentlemen who held originally the Offices of Harbour Master & Assistant Harbour Master, the one is dead and the other for upwards of several years past has been reduced to a pitiable bodily state which Confines him altogether to his bed.
On the last departure for England of Mr Pedder, the late Harbour Master, I had the honour of Officiating for him until his Successor, Captain Maidens Pot, arrived in the Colony in August 1854; that gentleman has been obliged to come to England on leave, after a Sojourn of only 2 years in the Colony, and I had the second time the honour to Conduct the business of the Harbour Master's Department. Soon after I was compelled by direction of my medical adviser to proceed to Shanghai for Change of Climate, but I regret that the effect produced thereby was only temporary, for after a week's Return to Hong Kong, my health began again rapidly to fail, so that I was finally compelled to Come to Europe.
Having been on long leave to this Country in the year 1858/1836 for 18 months, I indulged in the hope that I would be enabled to serve the Colony yet for a long period; that hope I Regret has been destroyed by the opinion of the Acting Colonial Surgeon, as in his Certificate dated 16 February, that "I Consider him totally unfit for further Service within the Tropics," and "I therefore beg to recommend that he be permitted...
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