4.
267
2.
The vacancy thus created enables me to deal finally with the important question of the staff of Interpreters for the Supreme Court.
I need not now refer to the discreditable state in which I found the general system of Interpretation in this colony. My despatch No. 109 of the 20th of September 1874 and subsequent despatches deal with the general question, but as to the interpretation of the Supreme Court, it is due to the judges of that Court that I should transcribe for Your Lordship's information the following sentence from a letter addressed to the local Government in May 1876 by the Chief Justice Sir John Smale, and which is printed (pages 14-16) by the Supreme Court Commission of 1879 :-
"The Interpretation in the Court has been often remarked on as most defective; not one of the European officers in the Court understands Chinese, and no Interpreter of the Court being a professional man can write or speak English with ordinary propriety, nor speak more than one dialect in Chinese. It is to be lamented that no person is being educated to be a proper Interpreter.