CO129-321 - Public Offices & Others - 1903 — Page 774

During the perjury committed by then interests and the repeated and abominable falsehoods constantly repeated in a stereotyped letter and also for the plain manner in which I am setting forth the following fact and preventing any back stair trickery in connection with this most serious matter, a death with me, questions in fact will be seen in the Report of the Commission.

The Commission itself was formed in the months of the winter. I was asked to give evidence. I was almost put into a difficult position by the Commissioner on the very day on which I had passage just before leaving for England, and I was given leave to remain in Hong Kong to answer the charges brought against me. This was strenuously opposed by Colonial Secretary, but finally granted by the Governor. The Report of the so-called "Commission to enquire into the general working of the Registry of the Inferior Court" will be in your hand, together with the correspondence which followed the Report.

2. Before going highly into details as possible, I must apologise for sending in such a lengthy document, which is costly. When I took over the Registry early in 1896, I discovered it was in a most inefficient and neglected state; documents lying about in disorder, stamps uncancelled, no proper supervision exercised in regard to the collection of the proper stamp duty or Court fees, and no proper cancellation of stamps. This led me to report my duty to bring it thoroughly into efficient order, which took 4 & 5 months to accomplish, and ensured the smooth working of it.

Already needed improvements were carried out during my tenure, and I incurred the undying resentment of my immediate predecessor, Mr. Wise, who I found was, as he is still, doing things without regard to contradiction and fear of contradiction drastically.

Page 767

...

tags. Spelling corrections were made, such as "purring" to "During", "intresses" to "interests", "falschords" to "falsehoods", "mammer" to "manner", "fart" to "fact", "serin" to "serious", "Commision" to "Commission", "Cangthang" to "lengthy document", "Registing" to "Registry", "Convidered" to "considered", "impurementy" to "improvements", "frncreash" to "incurred", "pre de cons" to "predecessor". Other minor corrections and formatting adjustments were made to improve readability and adhere to the instructions provided.