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the honour, at the request of Mr. F. Bulkeley Johnson, of Messrs Jardine Matheson & Co., to transmit two letters of his dated the 10th and 19th ultimo (with several enclosures), addressed to Your Lordship relating to the circumstances under which Mr. J. C. Hayllar was excluded from Government House three years ago, to the proceedings thereon of Mr. Johnson in 1881, and to the withdrawal of action for slander arising out of some questions Mr. Johnson thought fit, as a social friend of Mr. Hayllar, and from a duty he says he owed to that gentleman, to put to my late Private Secretary, Dr. Eitel, during my temporary absence from the Colony.
I also lay before Your Lordship two letters from Dr. Eitel, to the Acting Colonial Secretary, of the 19th and 27th of December, 1881, reporting on Mr. Johnson's letter of the 10th of December and its enclosures, as far as those documents reflected upon him (Dr. Eitel), in allowing the action to be withdrawn and in making apparently contradictory statements. I do not profess to know Mr. Johnson's object in this proceeding. At one time he was anxious to have the whole affair investigated publicly at the Legislative Council table. It was pretty generally known that he would not...