I am sure your Excellency will feel with me that it is impossible for me, under such circumstances, to accept the inkstand you have sent me and which I now beg most respectfully to return. Will you say to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State, when forwarding to him this letter, of which I furnish you three copies for transmission, that I am perfectly satisfied with the thanks of the community conveyed to me by their Committee and with their recorded opinion, as contained in their letter of December 3? I am obliged for the expression of thanks received from your Excellency and from the Secretary of State. I shall have a sufficient memorial of the plague year and of my work during it, in the gold medal to be presented to me by my fellow citizens and in the state of my fee book. I am not at all ashamed to say that I should have been highly gratified if Her Majesty had thought fit to honour me as my friend and colleague, Mr. May, has been so deservedly honoured; but the gift of a silver inkstand from the Government of Hongkong is, if your Excellency will pardon the expression, so ludicrously inadequate to the services rendered, even to the mere time expended by me in working on the Permanent Committee, that I can come to only one conclusion and that is, that the Marquess of Ripon has, in some strange fashion, been left under the impression that I was Secretary to the Permanent Committee, and not, from force of circumstances and because of the necessary division of labour between us, its brain and motive power. This is not said in any way in derogation of the ability or skill of my colleagues, who deserve the very highest praise and commendation, but they themselves constituted me their leader, accepted my leadership and would be the very first to admit and proclaim that in our five months' campaign against the plague, I was the General in Command. It is usual in England, or at least it always has been, to award the honours of the campaign to the leader, however distinguished may have been the services of his colleagues.
This is the first time, I think, I have made, either in speech or writing, any report, or anything like a report, on the work of the Permanent Committee as a whole. As Chairman, I have reported very fully on the services rendered by all those who served under us. I have been strongly urged to prepare and send in a general report, but I have shrunk from it as it would have seemed like reporting on my own work - work done freely, voluntarily and without a thought, at the time, of anything beyond serving the colony, in which I have lived so long, to the best of my ability. I apologise for speaking so much of myself now, but there are times when it becomes a duty to speak out and I think my fellow citizens will forgive me for doing so now, in justification of their recommendations to Her Majesty's Government on my behalf.
It is worthy of mention that Mr. May, referred to in Mr. Francis's letter, received the C.M.G. for his services during the plague.
It will be recalled that in an earlier article dealing with the Bubonic Plague in Hongkong in 1894, I mentioned that the Legislative Council decided on the demolition and re-building of a large number of houses in the Taipingshan area, as a precaution against further outbreaks of plague.
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I am sure your Excellency will feel with me that it is impossible for me, under such circumstances, to accept the inkstand you have sent me and which I now beg nost respectfully to return. Will you say to the Right Honourable the Secretary of State, when forwarding to him this letter, of which I furnish you three copies for transmission, that I am perfectly satisfied with the thanks of the community conveyed to me by their Committee and with their recorded opinion, as contained in their letter of December 3? I am obliged for the expression of thanks received from your Excellency and from the Secretary of State. I shall have a sufficient memorial of the plague year and of my work during it, in the gold medal to be presented to me by my fellow citizens and in the state of my fee book. I am not at all ashamed to say that I should have been highly gratified if Her Majesty had thought fit to honour ne as my friend and colleague, Mr. May, has been so deservedly honoured; but the gift of a silver inkstand from the Government of Hongkong is, if your Excellency will pardon the expression, so ludicrously in- adequate to the services rendered, even to the mere time expended by me in working on the Permanent Committee, that I can come to only one conclusion and that is, that the Marquess of Ripon has, in some strange fashion, been left under the impression that I was Secretary to the Permanent Committee, and not, from force of circunstances and because of the necessary division of labour between us, its brain and motive power. This is not said in any way in derogation of the ability or skill of my colleagues, who deserve the very highest praise and commendation, but they themselves constituted me their leader, accepted my leadership and. would be the very first to admit and proclain that in our five months' campaign against the plague, I was the General in Command. It is usual in England, or at least it always has been, to award the honours of the campaign to the leader, however distinguished may have been the services of his colleagues.
This is the first time, I think, I have made, either in speech or writing, any report, or anything like a report, on the work of the Permanent Committee as a whole. As Chairman, I have reported very fully on the services rendered by all those who served under us. I have been strongly urged to prepare and send in a general report, but I have shrunk from it as it would have seemed like reporting on my own work - work done freely, voluntarily and without a thought, at the time, of anything beyond serving the colony, in which I have lived so long, to the best of my ability, I apologise for speaking so much of myself now, but there are times when it becomes a duty to speak out and I think my fellow citizens will forgive me for doing so now, in justification of their recommendations to Her Majesty's Government on my behalf.
It is worthy of mention that Mr.. May, referred to in Mr. Francis's letter, received the C.M.G. for his services during the plague.
It will be recalled that in an earlier article dealing with the Bubonic Plague in Hongkong in 1894, I mentioned that the Legislative Council decided on the demolition and re-building of a large number of houses in the Taipingshan area, as a precaution against further outbreaks of plague.
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