parties, and the persistent opposition of the officials during the last few years to all prayers for enquiry has rendered it in this instance a little more marked.
I am very sorry to have put His Excellency to so much trouble. I thank him very sincerely for the honour done me in nominating me on this Commission. I should have liked to act on it, but I cannot consistently consent to do so. I still think an independent enquiry desirable and necessary. There can be no independent enquiry of the comprehensive nature desired by the public, and directed by the Secretary of State, unless at least a majority of the whole Committee are decidedly in favour of enquiry, and of enquiry in that particular form. I believe, with all respect to the opinion of His Excellency and His Honour the Chief Justice, that the Secretary of State intended to concede such an enquiry, and that the Committee as at present constituted may within the letter, but is not within the spirit of His Lordship's despatch. I am speaking now solely for myself. If the other unofficial members of Council do not agree with me and are content to accept this as the enquiry they asked for, they are free to act on it, and my place is easily filled by one or other of them.
My refusal to act need not stop the enquiry, if His Excellency thinks it right that it should proceed without further reference to the Secretary of State; but I am sure His Excellency will admit that I am at least consistent, and that entertaining the opinions I do I cannot be expected to accept the nomination, however anxious I am to support him in his desire for retrenchment.
SIR,
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
T. H. WHITEHEAD.
THE COLONIAL SECRETARY TO HON. T. H. WHITEHEAD.
Colonial Secretary's Office,
Hongkong, 12th August, 1893.
I am directed to acknowledge the receipt of your letter of 8th instant addressed to the Governor's A.D.C. (and received on 9th instant), in which you state your inability to serve on the Retrenchment Committee appointed by His Excellency, and consisting of the Honourable C. P. Chater, yourself, and Mr. May, with His Honour the Chief Justice as Chairman.
2.-Looking to the part which you have taken in obtaining the appointment of a Retrenchment Committee, and to the fact that your public assurances of the facility with which large economies might be effected in the expenditure of the Colony, and especially in the cost of the Government establishments, have raised expectations of results of extreme importance from your co-operation on the Committee, His Excellency has received your final refusal to serve with not a little surprise. He also feels that, in the circumstances which I have referred to, a Retrenchment Committee in Hongkong which did not include you as a member would be so manifestly incomplete and anomalous that your withdrawal precludes his making any further attempt at present to constitute a Committee. At the same time he must disclaim all responsibility for the inference which you have been pleased to draw in your letter of 2nd instant that this decision on his part is necessarily tantamount to "the abandonment of the enquiry altogether.”
3.-It may be useful here very briefly to recapitulate the circumstances which have led to the appointment of the Committee and those which have followed it. You have more than once moved in the Legislative Council for the appointment of a Retrenchment Committee, and dwelt on the great advantages that would accrue therefrom to the Colony. The Governor has been unable to share your view, being of the opinion that he was already aware of such economies as could be effected without breach of faith or prejudice to the efficiency of the public service, and being fully determined to do all in his power to effect them as opportunity might offer. Nevertheless in the Memorial of 12th January last addressed to the Secretary of State you pressed for the appointment of a Committee, presumably because you were satisfied that you knew of further economies that were practicable in addition to those contemplated by His Excellency, and because you thought, for some reason which is not evident, that the appointment of a Committee would afford the best, if not the only, means of bringing them under the notice of the Government. The Secretary of State decided that a Committee should be appointed, "over which the Colonial Secretary or the Chief Justice might preside, with one or two other Government officers and certain unofficial members of the Council as colleagues."
4.-Having received this instruction the Governor proceeded to carry it into effect; and he desires me in this connection to observe that if by the references in your letters of 25th July and 2nd instant to his "declared opposition" to "any enquiry or to "a searching investigation into the organization and manning of the Government departments and into the colonial expenditure generally," you intend to allege any opposition to the Committee which he was instructed to appoint, you have no warrant whatever for the allegation. When it was decided by the Secretary of State that a Committee should be appointed His Excellency's one anxiety was that the Committee should set to work as speedily as possible. At the first ensuing meeting of the Legislative Council he announced his intention of appointing a Committee consisting of the Chief Justice as Chairman, the Harbour Master, the Honourable Messrs. Chater and Keswick, yourself, and Messrs. Wodehouse and May, and on the return of the Chief Justice from leave, as soon as certain indispensable preliminaries had been arranged, he lost no time in making those appointments.
5.-Neither on the occasion of His Excellency's announcing the constitution of the Committee which he intended to appoint, nor for long afterwards, did you offer any objection or suggestion, and it was only when all the necessary arrangements had been completed that you complained to His Excellency that the appointment of three official members exclusive of the Chairman was not in strict accordance with the terms of the instruction of the Secretary of State. His Excellency did not and does not think it likely that the Secretary of State intended his phrase of "one or two other Government officers" to be so rigidly interpreted as to forbid the appointment of three, and the real intention was probably carried out by the appointments actually made. But desiring to obviate all possible objection on your part, His Excellency consented to reduce the number of the Committee by the withdrawal of one official and one unofficial member. This course presented the less difficulty, because one unofficial member, Mr. Keswick, had expressed a desire to be relieved from serving. His Excellency was confirmed in his opinion of the propriety of the step by an intimation from the Chief Justice that he considered a Committee of six unduly large, and that the difficulty of getting so many members together would result in the inordinate protracting of the enquiry. That he was fully justified in this view is shown by the experience of the Po Leung Kuk Committee, which, though it consisted of only four members besides the Chairman, took over a year, with the assistance of a shorthand writer, to record some 170 pages of evidence and furnish its report, giving a result of about half a page a day. The desire for the appointment of Commissions in Hongkong is equalled by the difficulty of inducing the members of the Commissions, when appointed, to sit.