Page:Crime and government at Hong Kong.pdf/76

 tion of this bungling and often contradictory "obserservation," return to the subject, and "state" as follows:—

"In the course of the Inquiry, it has come to our knowledge, that, previous to the appointment of the Commission, ."

It is true, that they absurdly add—for they had only the guilty party's word, for the palliation of that gross outrage on the public records of the Supreme Court and Superintendency of Police,—and, above all, on the course of public justice,—that;—

"It has been, that their destruction was ordered solely because they [occupying in all the space of a cubic foot] encumbered the Chinese Secretary's office;" —[to which, not being a Colonial office at all, they did not, in any way, belong; being there merely on the Plenipotentiary's request, as will be presently seen, to have the loan of them from their proper departments above mentioned, for a special purpose and for a limited period]; "while it appeared that they were then of no value, and could not be required."

But, as upon the subsequent trial of the Queen v. Tarrant, the Chairman of the Commission, after having heard the cross-examination, upon oath, of both the persons, upon whose evidence the above apology was received by the Commission, did himself declare, upon his own cross-examination, that, as compared with their former unsworn testimony, their