Enclosure 4.
Your Excellency,
Mr. Irving does not and cannot contend that he is a Cadet: what he contends for is that he has the Status of a Cadet, and as such is entitled to promotion to posts to which Cadets have a preferential claim.
2. The fact that he holds an office to which a Cadet has a preferential claim is no argument that he has the status of a Cadet: if it were an argument, it would follow that Messrs. Hazeland, Seth, J.W. Lee-Jones, Lyons, Wodehouse, Chapman, Woodcock and Lewis, who all hold Cadet offices, would have the same status: quod est absurdum.
3. The ground on which Mr. Irving bases his claim to Cadet status is apparently that his appointment in 1891 as a Junior Officer in the State of Perak was an appointment to an office to which, when the various Malay States became federated in 1895, a Cadet would have been appointed, and that upon the Federation taking place in 1895 the Officers then in the various native States were not disturbed in their appointments, but were permitted to hold them on equal footing with Cadets, promotion, as between Cadets and former Officers, being determined by seniority.
4. Mr. Irving is in error, I think, in stating in the 3rd paragraph of his letter that the position of Junior Officers and Officers originally appointed as such was assured by putting them on a par with Cadets and passed Cadets in the Straits Settlements: for the Federated Malay States and the Straits Settlements Services are separate Services; and prior to the federation of the Federated Malay States, Cadet Officers in the Straits Settlements were not appointed to the native States.