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compiled from those documents. Mr. May, who was also present, produced and verified those "Memoranda," and they were read aloud by the clerk.
Their contents being to the effect above stated, the reading excited the greatest sensation in the minds of all present. Nor was this sensation diminished, when, at the Governor's instance, a private report, negativing the existence of any suspicious entries, or of any entries whatever, except a few unimportant ones, was also produced and read.[1]
It is now admitted, that this report had been prepared and presented by Mr. Caldwell himself—the party under suspicion of practising deceit upon the Government;—that the books and papers had actually been referred to him for that purpose;—that, although the Acting Chinese Secretary, Mr. Mongan, had been directed to "help" him, the chief part in the examination had fallen the accused, and that the labour of his assistant ad been "very cursory";—that all these documents had meanwhile remained in the custody of the Chinese clerks of the Plenipotentiary, Sir John Bowring, with whom they had been lodged by Dr. Bridges, on his obtaining the loan of them from the magistracy, for the purposes of this pretended examination;—and that there is no doubt that, even before they reached Mr. Mongan's hands, already an abstraction of documentary evidence—and this for the express purpose of enabling Mah Chow Wong to make out his fiction of a lack of evidence and so entitle himself to a pardon,—had taken place.
"The council," says Mr. Dixson, an eye-witness,
- ↑ Evidence for the Crown in the Queen v. Tarrant; November Session, 1858.
