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"was very suddenly broken up." Under all the circumstances, and the more especially because strangers were present, I can very well imagine it.
These facts becoming public, a show of zeal was needed to quench the scandal,
A new reference was directed, but to Mr. Wade, this time, the chief Chinese Secretary. Dr. Bridges caused the papers—including Mr. May's "Two Memoranda"—to be submitted to that gentleman for his opinion and report. Only he forgot to inform him, that Mr. Mongan was of opinion that some of the documents had been abstracted by the friends of Mah Chow Wong, subsequently to the preparation of those "Memoranda" by Mr. May.
In Mr. Wade's possession these documents remained, down to his departure with Lord Elgin's mission to the North of China. He left behind him, in the Chinese Secretary's Office, the books and papers of the pirate's Hong, but not Mr. May's "Memoranda." These, by some accident, were confused with the papers of the mission, stowed in his despatch box, and so carried to the north. No communication having been made to him on the subject, from Hong Kong, it was not until his return to Shanghae, to wards the beginning of this year, that he learned that they had been inquired after by Mr. May, and their very existence ignored, or even denied, by Dr. Bridges and Sir John Bowring, and the grossest aspersions cast on the veracity of those who asserted them to have been in his custody. When I left Hong Kong for England, the arrival of those important documents from Shanghae was hourly expected.
During the proceedings in this case of Mah Chow Wong, from his third or fourth appearance in the
