I have now to reply to your question as to how far the facts stated in the leading article alluded to of the China Mail are "correct." I believe them to be grossly exaggerated generally and, so far as they refer to occurrences here, to be entirely incorrect.
When the article appeared, I drew attention of the Emigration Agent and the Registrar General to the subject. The result of their inquiries is given in the report by the Emigration Officer and by F.M. Lister, the Acting Registrar General. Their evidence is conclusive against the probability of either Annamite men or women being amongst the emigrant passengers by the Pacific Mail Steamers. The evidence is enclosed in Enclosures 1 and 2.
Mr. Lister also proves that the writer of the statement which attracted your Excellency's attention was made acquainted with the entire falsity of that statement, as it affects this place, though he has never had the honesty to confess it. I am certain that both Mr. Thomsett and Mr. Lister took considerable pains to investigate the matter, and I can at least speak for myself, having on one occasion very carefully inspected all the women passengers by the steamer on 19th June, and I can vouch for it that I saw none on that occasion whom I did not believe to be of purely Chinese race.
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However, a more refined version:I have now to reply to your question as to how far the facts stated in the leading article alluded to of the China Mail are "correct." I believe them to be grossly exaggerated generally and, so far as they refer to occurrences here, to be entirely incorrect.
When the article appeared, I drew attention of the Emigration Agent and the Registrar General to the subject. The result of their inquiries is given in the report by the Emigration Officer and by F.M. Lister, the Acting Registrar General. Their evidence is conclusive against the probability of either Annamite men or women being amongst the emigrant passengers by the Pacific Mail Steamers, as is shown in the enclosed, Enclosures 1 and 2.
Mr. Lister also proves that the writer of the statement which attracted your Excellency's attention was made acquainted with the entire falsity of that statement, as it affects this place, though he has never had the honesty to confess it. I am certain that both Mr. Thomsett and Mr. Lister took considerable pains to investigate the matter, and I can at least speak for myself, having on one occasion very carefully inspected all the women passengers by the steamer on 19th June, and I can vouch for it that I saw none on that occasion whom I did not believe to be of purely Chinese race.
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has been kept as is, assuming it is a page numbering metadata. Other seemingly out-of-context lines are kept as they were, assuming they are remnants of the original OCR output that might be part of a larger context not provided here.