A statement of the transactions on occasion of the extraordinary sickness which has lately occured at the General Penitentiary at Milbank / [A. Copland Hutchison].

  • Hutchison, A. Copland (Alexander Copland), -1840
Date:
1823
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A statement of the transactions on occasion of the extraordinary sickness which has lately occured at the General Penitentiary at Milbank / [A. Copland Hutchison]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    you—to all those,, in fine, to whom the merits of my case are known, whether I could have said or done less, as a matter indispensibly enjoined by the over¬ powering dictates of duty and conscience towards the public, leaving out of the question my own wrongs, which I am ready to forgive ? After all, I do not accuse you of criminal inten¬ tion. I believe it was far from your intention to commit acts detrimental to the public service. On the contrary, you have consumed much time and labour in gratuitously doing your best. What I distinctly charge upon you, the Managing Committee of the Penitentiary at Millbank (or rather your twm leading Members) is, that in the exercise of a wrong judgment, you have, from hasty inadver¬ tency, taken upon you, to the detriment of the public service, to decide upon matters not within your com¬ petency ; to tolerate a system of espionage ; and that you have been guilty of unmerited and unfeeling in¬ sult and injury towards myself personally, without this being in any way conducive to the public benefit. The public will naturally enquire, and expect to be informed, from what motive or provocation this conduct of your’s could proceed; and will be dis¬ posed, prima facie, to impute it to some error in my conduct. I am conscious of none; unless indeed it was an error to have differed in opinion from you re¬ garding the diet, or to have preferred being the vic¬ tim, rather than the associate, of those who were engaged in that system of secret intrigue and cabal among the officers, which in my heart I abhorred, as subversive of all liberal intercourse and every
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