C.0.
24428305
Recl
Ex Real 31 OUT 98
whose names were not on the list.
But with a few exceptions that staff has since
been entirely altered, for it was not long before the new staff
shewed that they were quite as ready to make money by illegi-
timate means as the old one, and after numerous changes I had
to break through the rule I at first adopted, and put the men
on the staff whose names were on the Wa Lane List.
The result is that I have now a staff of whom
no less than 14 members out of 36 are known to me by reason of their names being on the list to have received bribes in
the past.
In my opinion I am better off than if I had a
staff composed entirely of men of whose honesty or dishonesty I knew nothing.
These 14 men know perfectly well that I know
of their connection with the Wa Lane affair, and they are far more likely to keep fairly straight than if I had no such
knowledge of them.
Now as regards the question of equity, it seems
to me inequitable that an Inspector like Quincey, an educated well to do man and a Chinese should go on pension because he has denied his guilt, which no one in the Colony has any doubt of, and that an uneducated and poor constable like Au Hing should be dismissed without pension because he confessed his gullt.
Moreover the circumstances under which the con-
fessions