APPENDIX  XI.
 

  ESTIMATE OF GOVERNOR SIR HERCULES ROBINSON IN

                            CEYLON.



       (From Major Skinner's " Fifty Years in Ceylon.")



In  March  1865  Sir Hercules Robinson  arrived  as Governor, and the

month after his landing gave earnest of the interest he intended taking

in the welfare of  the island by starting on a tour through Happootella

and Saffragam.   The Colony was  much to  be congratulated on the

                        advent of  such a Governor, the most pains¬

                        taking, hardworking man I have ever met  in

                        his position.  An extraordinary love of justice

                        was his most peculiar  characteristic, and  I

                        have seen frequent instances of  this when

                        travelling  with  him ;  he would not decide

                        any claim  on a  superficial view of the case,

                        but would insist upon  receiving  the  most

                     .   minute details before giving an opinion.

                      n.   He astonished me on one occasion,  when,

                     ^ on a very remote journey, he called me in  to

                        his temporary office, and said, " At last I have

 sik HLHODLEb robinsoN.  sot to the  bottom of that case of yours in  re

                        Modelair Fonceka.

  This was a man who had been in my department for upwards of thirty

years,  and was  most efficient and  economical.  In a revision of the

establishment  of my department, I  had  recommended this faithful old

servant for a higher class of pay;  but the  Colonial Secretary  refused me

on the plea that eight or nine years  before he had given false evidence

in a court of law prejudicial to the  interests of the Government.  I

admitted that at one time I had entertained a similar impression of the

man's  conduct, but that circumstances had occurred which had com¬

pletely exonerated him;  and I stated that, had not this been the case,

it would have been my duty to have represented his conduct and to have

recommended  Government  to dismiss him, and  that the Government

itself,, if convinced of his having played  it false, would not have been

justified in keeping him in its  service.   The fact of the Government

retaining his  services for eight or nine years subsequently showed that

his  former supposed delinquencies  were  condoned.  The subject  had

been laid  before the Government three or four months previously; but

the papers had been repeatedly referred backwards and forwards to the

Supreme Court, to the Queen's advocate, and to my office.  At last, while

in a temporary  resting-place in a  remote out-of-the-way  jungle,  Sir

Hercules investigated a mass of correspondence and judgments in Court,

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