for some years with various literary studies and died on 5th February, 1881.
That Sir R. MacDonnell had understood the real position and needs of the Colony better than most of its Governors, appears clearly from the following extracts taken from one of his published dispatches (October 29, 1867). 'The circumstances of the Colony of Hongkong are so entirely exceptional and peculiar, that it is difficult for the Executive to derive from the experience of other Colonies, or the precedents established by the practice and traditions of Europe, any adequate system for its government and legislation … I would advocate the policy of leaving the Colony as far as possible the liberty to expend, on local improvements and works, all the available public income that can be raised from the community for these purposes, because the prestige and the preference given to it, as a depot, depends greatly on the advantages, as a residence and as a convenient depot, which it may continue to offer … I should gladly see more activity in making sanitary improvements and in rendering the loading and discharge of vessels more easy and less expensive than at present.'
The general feeling of the community, at the time of Sir Richard's final departure, was—that he was an emphatically sincere and, though a stern character, by no means an acrid man; that he was an able ruler, one of the most able, if not the best, of Hongkong's Governors; that he failed to please everybody because he, on principle, strove to do only what he himself thought best in the interests of the Colony, without fear or favour of any man; that he improved the police, the roads and the waterworks of the Colony; that he was not only careful in the management of the Colonial finances but established prosperity in place of positive insolvency; that he succeeded where every preceding Governor had failed, viz., in suppressing the local haunts and resources of piracy; that he knew how to govern the Chinese and gave them their proper subordinate place; that the best and most popular trait of his administration was the true English jealousy with which he guarded the honour and position
