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Public Officer,
I have to state that I had, notwithstanding the involuntary error fallen into by my Department, done faithfully and conscientiously all that rested in me personally to carry out the views of the Government, no step is left me optional but to place the accompanying correspondence before you, now that in the letter from the Acting Colonial Secretary's office to No. 1281 I am informed that the Acting Governor desires that the correspondence cease when I am thus further debarred from the opportunity of defending myself from the aspersions cast upon my character and official position in the letter No. 1340 and again repeated in that No. 1281.
It is now requisite I should state my object in addressing you at the same time that I am anxious it should be clear and not subject to misapprehension that I do not complain that during Mr. Mercer's temporary administration of the Government of Hong Kong he should—in correspondence with my Department—have adopted a style of address as offensive as it was uncalled for, and still less do I propose to complain of the Acting Colonial Secretary who merely obeyed his instructions in attaching his name to letters drafted by Mr. Mercer himself.
But as motives and actions have been attributed to me repugnant to the feelings of a Gentleman and of an Old Public Servant, I wish to place this letter in your hands as a record that I am not unconscious of the character of the letters addressed to me and numbered respectively M-1, 2, 40.