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Hong Kong to wit.—The Acting Attorney-General charges William Tarrant, of the Colony of Hong Kong aforesaid, Editor of the Newspaper called the Friend of China, with having, with intent to move the Queen's subjects to hatred and contempt of the Queen's Government in the said Colony, and to cause it to be believed that a certain grave and scandalous charge having been preferred, with others to the said Government, against Daniel Richard Caldwell, Esquire, Registrar-General of the said Colony, and submitted to the investigation of a Commission appointed for that purpose by Sir John Bowring, the Governor of the said Colony, and which said charge might have been satisfactorily proved before the said Commission, but for the interference of the said Government to prevent it, the said Government had perpetrated some wicked and contemptible manoeuvre for the purpose of preventing, and in effect had thereby prevented, the establishment of the said charge to the satisfaction of the said Commission, heretofore, to wit on the twenty-eighth day of July in this present year, one thousand eight hundred and fifty-eight, in the Colony aforesaid, falsely and maliciously printed and published a certain scandalous, false, and malicious libel of and concerning the said Government according to the tenor and effect following (that is to say), "the principal charge" (meaning the said charge against the said Daniel Richard Caldwell) "broke down," (meaning that the said charge was not established to the satisfaction of the said Commission) "through a contemptible, damnable trick on the part of Government" (meaning the said Government), "a trick which should certainly be punished in some way or other, for it is farcical to suppose that it was not performed after deep mediation and with reference to consequences."

(Signed)

William Tarrant, take notice that you will be tried on this Information at the Criminal Sessions at the Supreme ConrtCourt [sic], to be holden at Victoria, in and for the Colony of Hong Hong, on the