GOVERNMENT NOTICE
COLONIAL SECRETARY'S OFFICE
June 28th, 1838
THE Postmaster of Adelaide having recently pursued a course of conduct which requires from the Government a censure as public as his behaviour was notorious, lest such an example should have the effect of destroying the necessary authority of the Government, his Excellency directs the following letter to Mr. Gilbert to be published for general information of the public officers and servants, as a means of deterring them while in its service from pursuing a course which is at all times embarrassing to a Government, but more especially to the Government in a new colony where its functions are first called into being.
The Governor does not intend to convey a censure to the public officers generally, from many of which he has received ready support. But having frequently felt his Government embarrassed by the hostility of persons who are supported by its patronage, his Excellency takes this opportunity of declaring his determination to visit the first instance of such reprehensible conduct with the punishment that it obviously deserves.
By His Excellency's command,
T. B. STRANGWAYS,
Colonial Secretary.
_______________________________
Colonial Secretary's Office, June 28, 1838.
Thos. Gilbert, Esq. Postmaster, Adelaide.
Sir— I have submitted to his Excellency your letter of the 16th instant, stating your motives for having laid before a meeting of the opponents of the Government, summoned by yourself with the avowed intention of censuring an act of tbe Governor, official documents addressed to you by his Excellency's command ; and in replying to it I am to inform you that its receipt would have been earlier acknowledged had not more important matters engaged his Excellency's attention.
The motive assigned by you for producing my letter of the 11 th instant to that meeting, viz— "you produced the letter which you received from me explanatory of the reasons for opening the mails, not for the purpose of being commented upon, but in order to show the meeting in a manner more clear and correct than any private explanation of your own could have conveyed, the precise grounds, as related by myself, and which you thought it but just and liberal towards those concerned in the transaction should be given, knowing as you did that a strong feeling in the mind of the public existed with regard to it", might under other circumstances have been satisfactory.
But upon a review of the fact of that meeting having been effected by your own instrumentality and of your having attended it as a Government officer, with those documents in your hand, without the previous sanction of the Government, under which you hold your office, the Governor does not consider your explanation of such flagrant conduct by any means satisfactory.
And I am to intimate to you that when the Government thinks it necessary to consign the explanation or defence of its measures to any of its officers, it will prefer selecting gentlemen in whose ability and good faith it can place reliance. In a report of the proceedings of that meeting, which remains uncontradicted by you, it appears you informed that meeting that you had waited upon the Advocate General and myself for the purpose of receiving an explanation, &c. Whether such a circumstance be important or otherwise it is not necessary for his Excellency to express an opinion; but it is my duty to state that you neither saw nor communicated with me upon the subject, nor did you leave any message at my office. And I am informed by the Advocate General that you did not, as stated in your reported speech, call upon him.
In another part of that report a Mr. E. Stephens is made to ascribe wilful mis-statements, upon the evidence of a misquoted private conversation of the Advocate General with him, to a passage in my letter of the 11th instant relative to that officer's temporary appointment of Postmaster General. If, therefore, your disposition had been as 'just and liberal' towards the Government as the passage before quoted implies, you would scarcely have allowed such a statement of mine, as the chief executive officer of the Government, to be so pointedly contradicted in your presence, especially as you had received my letter a day or two previous to the meeting, and had therefore ample time to make yourself acquainted with the fact of the Advocate General's appointment had you doubted the accuracy of my information.
And at least you ought to have had the delicacy to remind the meeting (when you observed that the chief decision rested upon the fact of whether you were or not holding the office of Postmaster General) that you never had received such an appointment. But as the habit of styling your self Postmaster General (and which his Excellency has countenanced in the belief that you derived gratification from using the superior title) may at length have affected your recollection, his Excellency directs me to refer you to the second number of the official Gazette, where you will find yourself appointed simply a Postmaster of the Province.
Connected with your avowal that you found 'all the letters and papers correspond with the certificates of the Postmasters,' your conduct in drawing up a protest against the opening of the mails by the Postmaster General cannot be reconciled with the feeling of 'justice and liberality towards those concerned in the transaction' which you profess ; nor was it respectful towards the head of the Government, by whose authority it was done. And if you sought merely your own protection you would have secured it more certainly by obtaining the official advice of the law officer of the Crown, whose opinion would have guided the conduct of the Government in any ' proceedings in the case' that might have been adopted.
Or you might have respectfully remonstrated with the Government for what you may have considered an interference with your office, and such a remonstrance would have received immediate attention. But though you find every paper correct you make public the circumstance you alone could have known of, thereby exciting, as you say, ' a strong feeling in the mind of the public' (although his Excellency appointed you a Magistrate for the purpose of preserving by your power and example peace and harmony in the community) ; you detail the circumstances to the avowed editor of a newspaper which you knew to be hostile to the Government, and the result in your protest, and a meeting of the opponents of the Government, not called by the Sheriff, held at night in a public-house, and which you, though a Government officer and Justice of the Peace, attend and take a part in.
For your support of the Government, his Excellency does not ask ; for were it afforded with no better judgment than appears to have influenced your conduct in the present matter, it would not be very valuable. Nor does the Government wish to restrain its officers from expressing in private their opinions of its measures; but the Government has a right to expect that persons who are deriving their maintenance upon its patronage should have the decency to refrain from acts of opposition, as the Government neither forces employment upon them, nor desires them to continue in its service when their official duties cannot he discharged with self satisfaction.
His Excellency being of opinion that your conduct throughout this matter has been influenced by the sinister advice of others, is unwilling to visit it with any further mark of his disapprobation beyond this letter of reproof. But the Governor cautions yourself and the other officers of the Government (from some of whom be has met with embarrassing opposition), not to pursue for the future a similar course, or his Excellency will consider it his duty to her Majesty's Government to obtain the services of gentlemen in the public departments who can, without violence to their consciences, work hand in hand with the local constituted authorities.
I have only to remark, with reference to the signature of your letter, that you have selected an unseasonable period for assuming the title of ' Postmaster General,' which, under the circumstances, wears an insubordinate appearance ; but for the reasons before stated, bis Excellency is unwilling to ascribe improper motives to you in using it.
I have the honor, &c,
T. B. STRANGWAYS, Colonial Secretary.
No comments:
Post a Comment