The China Mail
HONGKONG, MONDAY, JULY 25, 1881.
THE resignation by the Hon. Dr Frederick Stewart of his acting appointment of Colonial Secretary has somewhat staggered even those who knew something of the crookedness of the present administration; and the reported appointment of the Hon. M. S. Tonnochy, the present holder of three lucrative posts, gave even a more serious colour to the incident. As the immediate cause of the difference of opinion between the Governor and the Acting Colonial Secretary is believed to have taken place in the secret conclave of the Executive Council, no reliable details have reached us; but that the community has been stirred to its centre by the news, and that many curious rumours are afloat, there can be no question.
The extraordinary faith which the public here justifiably place in Dr Stewart's honourableness and probity, when set alongside the different feelings entertained of H. E. the Governor and his two or three immediate followers, leads to but one conclusion, that something unusually crooked has been in the wind and that Dr Stewart's sense of official propriety had suggested his resignation. This will probably furnish one more "case" against the Governor to the Secretary of State for the Colonies; and in view of past experience, there is every reason to believe that justice and fairness will be dispensed in the Colonial Office—which, by the way, is the only place where such consideration can be obtained by Hongkong civil servants under the present regime.
This remark naturally leads us to refer to an official scandal which has lately become the talk of the Colony. It may indeed be said that such concatenations of unpleasant circumstances frequent now-a-days that they are more the rule than the exception; and that the "happy family" over whom Governor Hennessy is said to rule appears to move crab-like in its march towards the millennium. The manner in which the present Head of the Executive has endeavoured, by the most unusual modes of operation, to form public opinion is as well known as is the fact that such attempts have miserably failed.
There is now no secret as to the way in which Governor Hennessy has tried to influence the press of this Colony by supplying information which was open to the gravest suspicions, and it is equally well known that the usual sources of official information are thereby closed to the profession and to the public. It so happens, however that Sir John Hennessy is an official of great resources, and after much labour he has at last discovered a medium of making violent attacks upon his own subordinates in public. A most barefaced instance of this recently occurred in the case of Capt. Thomsett, one of the oldest and most respected civil servants of this Colony.
The "Press Commissioner" and his staff, driven from purer atmospheres, had to seek refuge somewhere else; but their latest effort to which we now more particularly refer proved to be a false move, and they in a short time stood aghast at the prospect of a complete exposé before the Judges of the honourable the Supreme Court! Such a position for the Governor of a British Colony to occupy was sufficient to shake even the "Press Commissioner" in the confidence he felt in such crooked courses; and it is rumoured that he has at last shaken himself free of this portion of his already numerous and miscellaneous duties.
The shifts which are said to become a necessity under certain circumstances may prove very galling upon occasion; and if what is now public talk comes at all near the truth, His Excellency stands revealed as an administrator who has stooped to publicly traduce the official character of his subordinate, and then to beseech from that ill-used gentleman, as a personal favour, escape from the natural consequences of his acts. Such, at all events, is the version of this discreditable business in the mouth of nearly every resident in the Colony to-day; and if the statement be inaccurate, it rests with His Excellency to show that it is so.
Indeed, it seems to us that for the credit of British administration such underhand dealings should be dragged to the surface. It is one of the worst features of intrigue that, when successful, the smaller individual usually goes to the wall; but even here, when the intriguer has apparently overshot his mark, the high personage gets off unscathed, while those of smaller consideration are to all appearance being crushed like the moth. In these days, of the unchecked exercise of a Governor's discretion in a Crown Colony, no provision seems to be made for obtaining redress against the injustice of the Head of the Government. We can only fall back upon the now almost worn-out mode of appeal to the Secretary of State for the Colonies; and await the issue of his impartial consideration of the facts.