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18. I thereupon requested His Excellency to consider the question of compensating me. for the loss I had sustained in consequence of the decision, illegal as I considered it to be, of the Executive Council.
To this I received a reply from is Excellency informing me that what I had referred to as being the reason. of the decision. of the Executive Council was not the fact.
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I referred His Excellency in reply to his letter of
His Excellency's answer to this astonished me still more: he suggested that I had based a legal claim on what he had said In his letter: he recommended me not to press the claim: but that if I desired it, the loss would be made good this, as has been since explained, ras intended to convey the suggestion that if I liked to ask for it some membersof the Executive Council would subscribe to give me the amount I had lost.
19. I shall be content now with summarising the correspon- dence which followed,
I endeavoured to make it clear that I desired to raise the question in a manner as far removed from a claim as possible: the case us I viewed it was one in which an ordinary person would bring an action for damages, and as I thought recover, I was therefore bound to put the matter forward in its legal aspect, in order that the Government should understand that I was not begging for the money, nor trumping up a clain based on some remark I had discovered in one of His Excellency's letters (as seems to have been His Excellency's view). It was obvious that I could not bring an action, but I hoped that the Government would consider the matter from that point of view and not insist on my bearing a loss which they had been inflicted, from most worthy motives, but unjustifiable under the Ordinance. I suggested a friendly discussion between the Attorney General and myself: this failing a friendly reference to one of the Lords Justices at home. His Excellency rejected these proposals, maintaining his right to decide the legal