by Sir E. B. Sytten
This Lordship also informed me that during the illness, and in the absence of the Secretary of State, addresses were made to me without my authority, and property was undertaken on my part by the Secretary of State or on my behalf.
My letters of the 17th May to Secretary Sir B: Lytton Bart: and of the 2nd June to the Earl of Carnarvon, Her Majesty's Government, have only added to uncertainty. Consequently, I have so advised your Department.
158. The state of health of the late Secretary of State and his prolonged absence from Town having been considered sufficient reason for my being kept in ignorance and suspense, it is needless to add that the promised interviews with Sir E. B. Sytten have not taken place.
BG. Agent, whilst awaiting the performance of that promise, I have read in the Gazette, the appointment of Mr Adams to the Attorney General-ship of Hong Kong, vacant Office. It has occasioned me some surprise, happening as it did, whilst the Secretary of State was ill and absent.
Such being the posture of the case, at this moment of your accession to the Colonial Seals, I have no resource other than to present it to you, and to ask you to decide that, in all these my actions, I have acted in duty to the post I held and the profession to which I belong.
1111.I shall not here enlarge upon the privations and losses which I have, for Eleven months past, patiently endured, nor on the pain with which I return to the Common walk of my profession here to find myself a Stranger.
142. But I must observe, for this is what I feel more poignantly that, in the Colony, my past actual position towards the course is best understood, my way being misinterpreted to the cause of good Government. Europeans hardly believe and Chinamen cannot be persuaded, even if it were not in Caldwell's Interest to persuade them to the contrary, that the unjust and ruinous sentence which was passed by Sir John Bowring upon me was not intended to condemn exertions to put down Crime.
143. Even if the Proceedings, with which my name having, like for like, and the Other Government Officers threatened me, for giving their Evidence, and for honestly avowing the information I had received from them, are not now to take effect, and I am solely to suffer, still the injustice done to me has its effect with that shrewd and suspicious and selfish people. Any present sanction given or to be given to that injustice will, I have advised your department, utterly deprive Under Secretary, any renewed Enquiry, such as the late Administration proposed at Hong Kong, of all hope or even Prospect of Success, this more Certain, since the resignation of the Excellent...