to pointed out in
my
502
short time he was in
charge,
and
letter of the 16th October to the Postmaster General declining to resign my
appointment,
with a
II
alir
a married man with a family of four children, entirely dependent upon my salary for the means of living. I have been in the service of the Post Office for 18 years in Hong Kong and during that time, until the present moment, I have faithfully performed my duties in the Office and there is no record of any misconduct on my part.
The charges made against me have originated in, and are the result, not of any wilful carelessness on my part but of the negligence or disorganised state of the Office under the late Acting Postmaster General Mr. Stafford Northcote, and of his successor Mr. J. Sercombe Smith who had no time to get things into order during the short period of his tenure, and of the short-handedness which occurred about the same time.
It cannot be denied that under Mr. Stafford Northcote the Office was in a state of considerable confusion and disorganisation and it is admitted that from sickness and other causes we were unusually short-handed. I respectfully submit that oversights and mistakes which may be fairly attributable to these causes and are not charged as being the result of culpable negligence, should not be too severely visited on subordinates, and I respectfully ask the Honourable Members of the Executive Council to take these things into their consideration.
In his letter of the 22nd November last, the Postmaster General states that, of the charges against me, 2, and 5, the most serious of all are admitted. I respectfully