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Police Court, down to about six weeks after the sifted books and papers of his Hong, and the "Two Memoranda" of Mr. May, thus got into Mr. Wade's hands, I had been absent in India upon sick leave. I never heard a syllable of what had occurred, until after my return.
But I now endeavoured to recall the attention of Government, to the scandalous connection between Mah Chow Wong and Mr. Caldwell; on which I had, on the 4th July, 1857, already officialised His Excellency, begging a reference to the heads of the Police and Jail Departments; and on which the gentlemen in question, Mr. May, J.P., and Mr. Inglis, J.P., being so referred to, had expressed sentiments in unison with mine, and had moreover submitted, in illustration and support of those opinions, facts previously unknown to me.
In the presence of these endeavours, on my part, of the general distrust of Mr. Caldwell amongst the public departments, and of the conviction, which every one, conversant with the proceedings in Executive Council, must have entertained, of the dishonest purpose, with which he had composed his false compilation of the entries relating to the convict and himself, it cannot but have occurred to the minds of Sir John Bowring and Dr. Bridges, that, as well the originals, as Mr. May's "memoranda" from them, were now of as much importance as ever, if, indeed, they had not become—(regard being had to the use I was like to make of them)—of still greater importance, than when the question they were used to solve, was merely one of the guilt or innocence of a Hong Kong Chinese convict.
Therefore their destruction, at such a juncture,
