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the Gaol, M. Keswick might have been of use as an advisor to the Attorney General or Judge of the Supreme Court on matters relating to Justice, but with his strong prejudices about the Chinese even the very few visits he has paid to the Gaol for the last thirteen years have probably done more harm than good.
The enclosed correspondence arose out of a complaint he made against my administration in the Legislative Council on the 6th of November 1879. We charged me with having set dangerous criminals free instead of deporting them. He had been allowed during my absence in Japan (by a misconception of the permission I had given that all Executive Council papers and all correspondence and minutes relating to deportation and conditional pardon since my arrival in Hong Kong might be examined by him in the Clerk of Council's Office) to remove to his residence all the cases and correspondence relating to deportation.
Having kept them for a month or two in his possession, he came to the Legislative Council and, reading from a written statement, he quoted four cases in which he thought he had discovered undue leniency on my part, one of them being case No. 1925, that of a prisoner named Mok Akwai, a returned deportee. Mr. Keswick quoted words only; but attention being drawn to the original document which was on...