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was being unjustly attacked, and there were only two alternativ-es
laissez faire, or action. I object to the doctrine of
laissez faire entirely; it has been the cause, in my opinion, of
the state of inanition of the Court, to which I refer later.
That the action I took did in nowise prejudice the dignity of
the Bench is I submit satisfactorily shewn by the fact that His
Excellency the Governor neither took any action, nor expressed
any opinion adverse to my action at the time, nor directly at
any time after, which he would undoubtedly have done had any
rumour reached him, or had he thought, that the prestige of the
Bench had actually suffered; nor indeed can His Excellency have
ever intended to refer to it, thus showing that in his opinion it was not necessary to do so. His Excellency only referred to it
incidentally in a despatch written some two months later, deal-ing with an entirely different matter, and then only because
he thought it better to explain a paragraph in a letter of mine
which happened to be in correspondence then being forwarded to
the Secretary of State. All this I submit shews that in the
opinion of the Head of the Government I had done nothing but
what was absolutely essential in the circumstances and that what
I had done had been beneficial. It was therefore a matter of
great surprise to me to hear some two months afterwards that an
adverse opinion had been formed by His Excellency; yet even then
it was only reported "incidentally", and reported moreover
without the customary reference to the officer affected by that
opinion.
5.
In view of what has occurred, I now have
the honour to request the Secretary of State's ruling on the
question whether the procedure adopted by His Excellency the
Governor in reporting the matter in this way to the Secretary
of State, and only informing me of the fact after the report
had been made, was consistent with the rules and traditions of
the Colonial Service.
7.
It was,
as I said in my former memorandum,
originally