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read, on the motion of the chairman of Committee, it was unanimously agreed. that, "the Council do agree with the Committee in their said Report."[1]
On both occasions, Dr. Bridges was present, but silent.
The silence was the more remarkable, since the acting Colonial Secretary had expected a very different result from the Committee, from the moment when he proposed its nomination, down even to the presentation of the Report.
So confident, indeed, was he, and so little delicate in expressing his confidence, that only the evening before the presentation of the Report, he accosted the chairman (the Honourable Mr. Davies, chief magistrate of Hong Kong) on the subject, and greatly to that gentleman's disgust, congratulated himself on the excellent way in which, as he said, he had managed to get out of the scrape, by obtaining such an inquiry, as was sure to end in clearing himself and silencing all future accusers. He then went on to compare his conduct, in that respect, with the conduct of his friend, the Lieutenant-Governor (Colonel Caine), in the years 1846—9; when publicly charged, not only in the newspapers of Hong Kong, but before Earl Grey, then Secretary of State for the Colonies, with being principal, or accessary, in certain very gross cases of extorting money and taking bribes from Chinese grantees of crown hereditaments.[2] He said: "The Colonel was wrong in not doing as I have done. If I, like him, had held my tongue or hushed it up, I should never have hoped to hear the last of it.
