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had received the sanction of the Secretary of State, and of the grounds for that sanction, I am,
as your Lordship knows, as yet entirely ignorant.
The usual courtesy of a communication from the Colonial Office has been withheld.
And how, in this state of circumstances, your Lordship can now assume that I have asked for any reconsideration of my dismissal from public employment, I am unable to imagine.
I owe it to the Office I held, and to the Profession, whose honor I have ever sustained and promoted, that I do now, without delay, call upon your Lordship to state the grounds upon which this aperted dismissal from office rests: and your Lordship must feel that neither the want of 'authority' which you avow nor the absence of the Secretary of State can constitute any reason for withholding from me, for a moment, that information.
In the mean time, my Lord, or until I receive from the Secretary of State himself, the notification of my "dismissal, and the grounds thereof, I must forbear to respond to your Lordship's concluding invitation.
All other considerations must give way to this: and, if your Lordship has had an opportunity of perusing an...