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named Shap Lok, who had been in frequent communication with Mr. Caldwell (and is reported, but not proved,[1] to be a sister, by Chinese usage, of Mrs. Caldwell), received from the Foo Tai pawnshop, the sum of four hundred dollars; because the sentence on a pawnbroker, belonging to the said shop, had been mitigated, as was supposed, through her influence; and that she received a further sum of fifty dollars, for her personal trouble in the matter."
It would have been well for the Commissioners to have found, more distinctly, the object for which the first of these sums was levied.
But, as they distinctly do state that this is one of their unanimous findings, "in support of the inference that Mr. Caldwell is unfit to be a Justice of the Peace;" but from which inference from the facts so found, they, by a bare "majority"[2] dissented, the public are left to suppose that, in the unaminous opinion of that Commission,—as the fifty dollars, were appropriated to the personal compensation of Shap Lok, for her agency and "frequent communication" with Mr. Caldwell in the matter—so the four hundred dollars were appropriated, in some manner, to the benefit of the agent, through whom the purport of these communications had been so successfully pressed, upon the depositary of the Queen's Prerogative of Grace.
If so, it adds to the gravity of the case, that it is of a date so recent as the spring of 1858—a period
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