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With the tmost respect I beg leave to say, that considering the momentous and multifarious duties imposed upon Your Grace from the exalted position you occupy. it is impossible that Your Grace's mind can descend to the details of the internal economiy of a small colony like this. In plainer words, but with equal respect, I beg to say, that I am much more capable than Your Grace of judging of the validity of the pre- mises whereon Sir Hercules' explanations, so conclusive to Your Grace, are based, and I can draw no satisfactory conclusion as to the reason of His Excellency's despatch being withheld from me.
Regarding the culprit Caldwell, against whom Your Grace suggests that I should prefer criminal charges,-I read Your Grace's despatch with utter amazement. In my respects of 7th May, I informed Your Grace that I had already laid twenty four charges against the man, and that the Executive Council stopped me at the seventh. Were I to comply with Your Grace's suggestion, the charge which the accused has so repeatedly urged against me, that my motive for prosecuting him was malevolence, would indeed derive considerable support. Should Government again call upon me to proceed with the charges I have already laid against the culprit, I will not hesitate to comply, but as for being excited to hunt the man whenever the convenience or motives of Government may dictate such an entertainment, I denounce the idea. The abandoned charges lay at the door of Goverment, and not at mine.
As for the charges preferred against others in my previous correspondence with Your Grace, I am averse to it being supposed that these are the idle fantasies of my own brain, or are not deducable to any defined and succinct shape. I therefore proceed to state them in a formal and straightforward manner, holding myself in readi- ness to substantiate them, whenever Your Grace sees fit to accord me the opportunity of doing so in such a manner as that the question of proof shall not rest with the parties
accused.
I charge Sir Hercules Robinson.
First. With having convened secret meetings of the Legislative Council whereat money was voted for his own behoof.
Second. With having suppressed, both from H. M. Government and the Public, three annual Reports of the Colonial Surgeon, because of the exposure they con- veyed of the mismanagement of municipal and sanatory affairs and further with having intimidated the Colonial Surgeon into indicting reports for publication, of a very dif ferent tendency from the original documents.
Third. With having broken faith with me in the publication of Caldwell's so called defence. When that voluminous, discursive, and irrelevant document was brought before the Council, the Chief Justice stated that he had read it through, that it was not entitled to the appellation of a defence, being nothing less than virulent and scur- rilous abuse of his accusers, and totally unfit for publication--indeed the Government would render themselves liable to a prosecution for libel if they did publish it. The document was then placed in the hands of the Clerk, who proceeded to read it. How long he read I cannot say for I went to sleep, a refreshment I sometimes stand greatly in need of. I was awoke by the Governor's voice, or possibly by the Clerk stopping read- ing. I found every one unconnected with the Council had left the room but myself. The Council was in a dilemma. The Chief Justice adhered to the opinion that publication of the defence was out of the question. The Governor proposed that the libellous parts should be cxpunged. The Chief Justice rejoined that that would involve the entire defence the whole Council agreed that it would have a bad appearance if the so called defence were rejected. I then rose and stated that in so far as I was concerned, I was perfectly indifferent as to what the culprit might say about me, and if the Governor would allow me to add a refutation of myself to the defence, I had no objection to it going to the public as it was. I had no idea until afterwards that abuse of me so entirely pervaded the document. My offer solved the difficulty, and the defence was ordered to be printed.
This occurred in June; a printed copy of Caldwell's defence was supplied me, I think in August, and I fully admit that I might have procured the documents necessary for the rebuttal of the abuse levelled at me, sooner than I did. But being an overworked man I have fallen into the habit of never doing anything until I feel com- pelled, and under the circumstances I have stated, expecting to receive notice from the Governor as to when my refutation would be required, I deferred the matter until I should receive such notice, under the conviction that the so styled defence of the culprit could not be published without my rejoinder. That notice I never received. Hearing casually in December that the publication of the Minutes of the Enquiry was being hurried, I applied to the Governor for two days time to prepare my refutation, which would have allowed ample time for its insertion in the Report. This request His Ex- cellency refused, and thus I stand grossly libelled and scandalised in the Report.
my last charge against Sir Hercules Robinson. If it should here- after be found that His Excellency has taken advantage of Caldwell's groundless abuse of me to gratify his unaccountable and implacable hostility to the Press, I must be excused for throwing myself upon the honor of Your Grace for protection and redress.
Whatever my motives were in laying the charges I did against Caldwell,
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I was invited by Government and challenged by him to do so. At great personal in- convenience and aunoyance, did the State a signal service, and I am constrained to believe that even common courtesy, to say nothing of ordinary integrity, should have dictated a more becoming returu than the course of conduct adopted towards me which I have just related.
My charges against Mr. Mercer are :
First. For lending himself to Dr. Bridges in a most unseemly manner to intensify the punishment inflicted upon Mr. Tarrant for the libel on Colonel Caine, in voluntarily acting as visiting Justice of the Peace in conjunction with Mr. Geo. Lyall, a non-official member of the Legislative Council, a notorious partisan of Dr. Bridges.
Second. With having been long and intimately acquainted with Dr. Brid- ges-with acting as his partisan and friend previously to, during the progress of, and subsequently to the publication of, all those scandalous acts whereof the Doctor was proved guilty and which the Press continually denounced. With having screened Dr. Bridges from the consequences of his acts whilst sitting on the Executive Council during the enquiry into the Civil Service Abuses, and to the last justified Dr. Bridges. well knowing that in Dr. Bridges' numerous efforts to assist the piratical association where- of Caldwell and Mah-chow Wong were the fountain head, Dr. Bridges had committed perjury and had burnt public records---well knowing too, that regarding the false scanda | against Mr. May, which in the finding of the Executive Council, Caldwell was so strongly and justly denounced for uttering, Dr. Bridges was more guilty than Caldwell. Mr. Mer- cer well knew also the steps adopted by Dr. Bridges to procure Mr. May's dismissal be- cause of that officer's unceasing efforts to bring the piratical association to justice, whereof Dr. Bridges was the pillar and support.
Third-With culpable apathy in allowing and sanctioning Caldwell to pro- cure the services of H. M. vessels of war, upon a direct application from the culprit to the naval commanding officer, after Mah-chow Wong's trial and transportation, and after Caldwell's long and intimate connexion with the pirate had become, so notorious as to be admitted. In fact after the Caldwell commission had thus remarked upon the connexion "That with regard to charge 6, a long and intimate connection between Mr. Caldwell and "Ma-chow Wong has been proved, but that there is no proof of any connection by affinity according to "Chinese law or Custom."
"That of the fact stated in charge 13, of the release of the men upon Mr. Caldwell's represen- "tation as to their character, there is no doubt whatever; and that it appears incomprehensible how any person, "with Mr. Caldwell's knowledge of the Chinese language, and holding the appointment he did, could have been ignorant of the character of the boats in which the men were seized and that one at least of these men was a "notorious pirate, particularly as it is in evidence that Ma-chow Wong was connected with the boats.”
Fourth--With allowing my charges against Caldwell to stop at the seventh when he must have known there were documents in his (Mr. Mercer's) office to (more than) prove every word of the charge which ran as follows: "With having through a false declara- tion obtained a British Register for a lorcha belonging to the said pirate which lorcha was commanded by a notorious pirate named Beaver, to whom Mr. Caldwell paid wages, and which lorcha was piratically employed whilst sailing under such Register." The documents I refer to principally, are---a despatch from the Governor of Macao---the declaration of ownership---the renewal of the register at a date after Caldwell had sworn on the trial of Mah-chow Wong, he had ceased to own her. The subject was broached before the Council upon another charge. Caldwell admitted or never denied that Beaver was a pirate and that he did command a piratical lorcha, but that her name was the Kum-hap-hone, not the Kee- lung-poo-oan. The papers above alluded to will prove that this was false, and that the latter lorcha was the one which Beaver commanded.
Fifth.---With having met at a banquet at the Zetland Lodge, (Mr. Mercer being the Provincial Grand Master of the Order of Freemasonry) the culprit Caldwell.sub- sequent by to his dismissal from the public service. I am credibly informed that owing to this countenance on the part of Mr. Mercer, the culprit has since been permitted to offi- ciate as acting Worshipful master of the above named Lodge.
My charges against Mr. Alexander, are as follow.
First.---Partisanship towards Dr. Bridges, subsequently to his guilt having been proclaimed time and again. With having in this behalf. as taxing officer of the Court, allowed Dr. Bridges in the Bill of Costs in Colonel Caine's libel case against Mr. Tarrant, about $2,300, whereas in the case of the Queen v Trrrant, when the Crown lost, only $780 were allowed and even that was deemed excessive by Sir John Bowring. The two cases were precisely identical, except in that where the excessive amount was al- lowed, the accused was undefended. With allowing, a short time subsequently, Dr." Bridges to get up a petition in his, Mr. Alexander's favor, praying on behalf of the legal pro-. fession that the Legislative Council would increase his, Mr. Alexander's salary, as Regis- trar of the Supreme Court. With accepting, after a full knowledge of Dr. Bridges' guilt his agency, upon his leaving the Colony for England.
Second. With having concealed from the Council when the successful application for an increase of salary was made, the fact of his being the recipient of fees of office as Registrar of the Supreme Court, a circumstance which most if not all the mem- bers of the Council were perfectly ignorant of.
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