22.
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and fortisstance in this, and in all other Matters.
I desire it to be remembered
7. that, at the date of this despatch, I have only been six weeks in settling, during which period I have been overwhelmed with a multiplicity of public business. As minute attention to details, as well as the exposition of general principles and rules in my dispatches, will prove, I have worked hard every day and all day, in a very depressing and enervating Climate. I am conscious that I may have sometimes fallen, from as yet imperfect knowledge, into slight errors with regard to the small details referred to above. Still, I believe no further experience will materially modify my present impressions. At all events, I have little doubt but that Your Lordship will approve the action which I have taken in a somewhat cognate matter. A petition was addressed to me recently by several of the English and other European Merchants praying that orders may be promulgated and enforced, preventing the periodical Chinese processions