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enclosing copies of his correspondence in the month of December, with the Colonial Secretary in which he invited me to frame charges against him and asked for a detailed enquiry by the Executive Council. I had, however, in my despatch of the 3rd instant already laid copies of his letters before Your Lordship and explained why I was not disposed to enter into any discussion with him, either in correspondence or before the Council, as to his blunders, or otherwise, when he was acting as my Private Secretary.
12. That I was right in avoiding any discussion of the kind and declining any oral communication with him on these questions can be gathered from the sort of threat he uses in his letter to Mr. G. Stafford Northcote (my Private Secretary) of the 4th of January 1882, in which after stating that they relate to "private and domestic affairs," he says "The Governor may eventually be compelled to refer officially to other oral communications" referring to other persons beside the Governor. As he is now acting under the pressure of Mr. J.C. Hayllar, I can understand this threat of trying to cause annoyance to other persons. These two gentlemen know full well that it is possible, in such matters, to cause annoyance to persons who...