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on these papers except to invite Your Lordship's particular attention to the letter to Mr Low in passage in my letter which I referred to the threat his lawyer, M. Drummond, conveyed from Mr Hayllar, through Mr. Low, to me as to the approaching visit of the Young Princes; and to the instructions given by Mr Low to Mr Drummond. In the face of that threat and of Mr Low's conduct, it was clearly my duty to make any personal sacrifice, consistent with the preservation of my honour, to get the action withdrawn.
6.
I take this opportunity of also laying before Your Lordship a copy of a letter of the 24th September, 1881, written to me by Dr. Eitel when I gave him some instructions at Victoria and a copy of the instructions he gave his solicitor on the 23rd of September, 1881. From these documents it will be seen that he was acting on his own responsibility in exposing Mr. Hayllar's antecedents, instancing a case which I had never heard of before in which – as Dr Eitel informed me in the enclosed letter – a late member of the Executive Council (before my arrival in the Colony) would not allow his wife to remain at a dinner party until Mr Hayllar was sent out of the room. His raking up such scandals, whether true or false, was his own doing and on his own account and without my...