Autograph Letter Signed ('John S. Pakington') from the British Conservative politician John Somerset Pakington, 1st Baron Hampton, to General Sir Robert Gardiner, Governor of Gibraltar, discussing his 'printed but unpublished Report' on the 'Rock'.

3pp., 12mo. Bifolium on mourning paper. Good, on lightly-aged paper. He writes to thank Gardiner for sending him 'a copy of your printed but unpublished Report to His Majesty's Government on the danger of governing Gibraltar as a Colony'. Gardiner's report 'forms an appropriate termination' to his 'administration of the affairs of the "Rock," & I shall read it with the interest and attention due to your long Experience in that Fortress'. He ends by sending his compliments to Lady Gardiner. According to the Oxford DNB: 'In 1854 the committee of merchants at Gibraltar protested to Lord Aberdeen's government against Gardiner's interference with the Gibraltar trade, which he described as contraband and sought to render more reputable. The correspondence, together with a long report by Gardiner entitled ‘Gibraltar as a fortress and a colony’, was printed as a parliamentary paper (Parl. papers, 1854, 43). A polemical pamphlet, replying to the report, was distributed gratis by the committee of merchants in 1856.'