CO129-196 - Public Offices & Others - 1881 — Page 277

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the Supreme Court, and lowering its reputation in a manner prejudicial to the most important interests of the colony. Neither can his Excellency permit a member of the Bar, and one who enjoys the position of a Queen's Counsel, to advance such charges against the Chief Justice, couched in language so strong, without calling on him either to withdraw those charges, or adopt the most legitimate means for substantiating them."

It appears that Mr. Pollard, in accordance with a sug- gestion of the Governor, petitioned the Judicial Com- mittee of the Privy Council, before whom the Chief Justice appeared by counsel, and the proceedings complained of None of Mr. Pollard's allegations were were reversed. denied by the Chief Justice, as appears by the case as reported. (See 2 Law Reports, Privy Council Appeal Cases, p. 116.)

I may be permitted to give an extract from a leading article in the Hongkong Daily Press of July 27, 1880, to the editor of which I am a total stranger. "Of the merits of the squabble we cannot express an opinion; that we leave to professional hands: but of the absolute impro- priety of the scene enacted yesterday even the most indif- ferent spectator or the most partial of Sir John Smale's partizans and admirers cannot fail to form a very sound estimate. We have never heard the fons et origo mali of the existing feud between the parties concerned in the scene referred to; and, therefore, in whom the offence lies cannot be arrived at; yet we are not without some guide whereby to form a judgment; for while one of the parties is a newly arrived gentleman, of whom we know nothing, save that he seems a most efficient and industrious officer, and of whom those competent to express an opinion affirm that he is the best Registrar that ever held office in this colony; the other is a dignitary subject to ebullitions of passion giving birth to outbursts of intemperance and

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caustic remarks, some of which have been placed on record in the journals of the colony.”

I may further give one other extract from the Hongkong Daily Press, dated January 12, 1881, the day on which I left the colony, as an illustration of public opinion.

"It was indeed an ill moment that gave Mr. Gibbons the opportunity of joining the official staff of this colony. After a lengthy and honourable professional career in England, the circumstances were indeed calamitous which induced him to leave the path he had thus far safely trod. No doubt in the expectation of greater advantages, he left home and friends to join a community remarkable for intelligence and courtesy, there to lend the aid of his experience and learning to the furtherance of the sacred objects of justice and order. The realization of his dreanis proved but the wildest nightmare. In the guise of justice he found oppression, and order he learned to be but an euphemism for contention and strife. Such was the dis- illusionising of this hapless man.

"It may be conjectured than in the usual course an inquiry will be held upon the Registrar's conduct. Per- haps for the sake of the gentleman himself it were well that such an inquisition should be made, when he will have an opportunity of making known to Government and the public under what extraordinary circumstances it became possible that a man of years, of learning and activity, a man indefatigable in duty, an official specially selected by the home authorities to set right the entangled condition of the Registry, and the ablest Registrar the colony ever possessed, came, regardless of all personal consequences, to appeal to the public and the press as his only protection."

I have endeavoured to be concise at the risk of being obscure, and I have omitted to mention many matters which would be relevant had I any other object in view

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