and which the Officers of my Staff had undergone much fatigue "Government for a small gratuity,
I recommended them to
but Mr Gardiner Austin, expressing some reluctance to grant my request lest it might establish a precedent, I obtained leave, as an alternative, to distribute amongst them
a sum of $890 out of land sale fees that had accrued to myself in the course of 1880, or December
the ordinary way
I went home on leave Mr Bowdler, the Assistant Surveyor General,
acted in my place for the space of twenty-two months
during this period received $2,122 or £440 in land sale fees. Mr Bowdler was, of course, entirely within his rights in taking the fees of office, since my personal renunciation of them was not necessarily binding on any locum tenens who might not hold my views in this matter.
The $2,122 received by Mr Bowdler in fees during his short term of office, having attracted the notice of the Colonial Office, explanations were asked for. The Earl of Kimberley, having been informed of my voluntary relinquishment in previous years of these emoluments of my office, approved of my decision in Colonial Office Despatch 222 of 23rd January 1883. His Lordship, however, did not mention that he would be disposed to entertain any application for making good to me the loss, or to approve of some allowance being conceded to me for this voluntary sacrifice, in the calculation of my pension when the time came for my retirement from the service. The amount involved
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involved being small, and the matter being of no interest except to myself, this point of abolition of the fees was overlooked in the
As it is usual to base a retiring officer's pension on his salary as well as his fees for services, I now very respectfully ask whether a Secretary of State would be willing to concede to me, in consideration of my long service in this Colony, the grant of the two indulgences just mentioned, and allow me, when I retire from the service, to count the £1000 in the calculation for my pension, notwithstanding that I have given up this emolument to the Colonial Treasury.
In the preceding paragraph I quote £1000 as the allowance because it is a round sum and the equivalent which Governor MacDonnell...