6. The Retrenchment Committee having then been reduced to four members, exclusive of the Chairman, viz., the Harbour Master, Mr. Chater, yourself, and Mr. May, you were still dissatisfied, and you asked that it might be again reconstituted by the withdrawal of the Harbour Master, and the substitution of an unofficial member of Council in his place." Your request was based on the ground that "to be of any practical value the Committee must contain a majority of unofficial members. The Governor is at a loss to imagine by what process of reasoning you can have arrived at this astonishing conclusion. It is the more extraordinary because a subsequent letter of yours shows that you had grasped the fact that the Committee would have no power to decide anything, and that its functions were strictly limited to enquiring and recommending. It obviously follows that any recommendations which the Committee, or any of its members may make, will by no means necessarily derive weight in proportion to the number of the members making the several recommendations, but solely from the amount of reason and good sense which the recommendations may severally contain. You practically informed the Government and the public on more than one occasion that you have suggestions to make which are feasible and which would enable very important reductions to be made in the expenditure of the Colony, and you are apparently of opinion that you can propound those suggestions only through the instrumentality of a Retrenchment Committee. Whatever the grounds of that opinion may be, it is clear that for the propounding of your suggestions it cannot be essential that you should have a majority on the Committee. Even if you were in a minority of one, the Governor fails to see why that should prevent you from making the most useful recommendations that it might be in your power to make. The circumstance of your being in a minority could not in any way detract from the reasonableness of any recommendation which you might make, nor consequently from the consideration to be given to such reasonableness; nor would these in any way be increased if you were in a majority. This is, however, by the way: the material point is not how you arrived at your conclusion, but that you did arrive at it.
7. Once more, in his anxiety to remove even the semblance of a justification for your reluctance to serve on the Committee, the Governor was disposed to give effect to your wishes. Needless to say, he did not consider them reasonable, but he thought it was just possible to assent to them, as they did not directly contravene the terms of the Secretary of State's instruction. But here he was met by a double difficulty. Mr. Belilios, who was invited to join the Committee, declined, and the Chief Justice objected to presiding over a Committee constituted in the manner desired by you. In order, however, to do the utmost that was possible to meet your views, although he was quite unable to admit their reasonableness, the Governor reduced the number of official members on the Committee by the withdrawal of the Harbour Master, so that the Committee finally consisted of the Chairman, another official, and two unofficial members of the Legislative Council.
8. His Excellency subsequently, after intimating his inability to adopt a suggestion made by you to add to the Committee a gentleman who was neither an official nor a member of the Legislative Council, caused you to be informed that he could not alter the constitution of the Committee, consisting of the Honourable Mr. Chater, yourself, and Mr. May, with the Chief Justice as Chairman; and you have thereupon finally declined to serve on the Committee.
9. Under these circumstances His Excellency has no alternative but to acquaint the Secretary of State with the steps which he has taken to carry out His Lordship's instruction, and with the failure which has attended them; and he directs me to invite you to submit any representation on the subject which you may wish to be considered by the Secretary of State. In view of the considerable delay which has already taken place, it is desirable that the matter should be reported to the Secretary of State as soon as possible, and His Excellency therefore trusts that you will not take more than a week to formulate your representation. It should be submitted in triplicate.
10. In according you the permission for which you have applied, to publish the correspondence, His Excellency desires that this letter may be taken as a portion of the matter to be published, and that it may be sent to the Press for publication at the same time as the previous letters on the subject.
The Honourable T. H. WHITEHEAD,
&c., &c., &c.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient servant,
G. T. M. O'BRIEN,
Colonial Secretary.
Hon. T. H. WHITEHEAD TO COLONIAL SECRETARY.
The Honourable G. T. M. O'BRIEN, C.M.G., Colonial Secretary.
SIR,
Hongkong, 26th August, 1893.
I have the honour to acknowledge the receipt of your letter No. 1,185, bearing date the 12th instant.
2. In this letter you acknowledge, by direction, my note of the 8th August to the A.D.C. conveying my final refusal to serve on the Retrenchment Committee of four appointed by His Excellency the Governor. You inform me that, for the reasons stated in the second paragraph of your letter, and to which I shall presently refer more fully, His Excellency has received my refusal with no little surprise, and that he feels himself precluded by that refusal from making any further attempt to constitute a Committee. You point out, however, that the abandonment of the Committee does not necessarily involve the abandonment of all enquiry into the expenditure of the Colony. You then proceed to review the circumstances which led up to the attempts that have been made to appoint a Committee, and that have followed them, and you conclude by according me the permission I asked for, to publish the whole of the correspondence on the subject, and by requesting me to let you have at an early date, and in triplicate, any representation I may desire to make to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State for the Colonies.
3. I regret that I have not been able to disentangle your very long and very complicated statement, and to prepare a reply to the very serious charges there brought against me, within the week you were so good as to allot me. I have taken time to reperuse all the correspondence on the subject, and all my utterances about retrenchment and the Retrenchment Committee, and I think I shall now be able to satisfy the public and the Secretary of State that your very personal and very direct attack on me is wholly without justification, also that it is not I who ought to be held responsible for the failure on the part of the Government to carry out the instructions of the Colonial Office.
4. I have no desire to address Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State for the Colonies on the subject. My position is fully explained in this correspondence. I have no doubt His Excellency will forward it in its entirety to the Right Hon. the Marquess of
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