DI
DROIT
THE HONGKONG
Government Gazette.
34.
Sublimbru bg Authority.
VICTORIA, SATURDAY, 20TH AUGUST, 1870.
VOL. XVI.
VOTES AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL OF HONGKONG.
No. 4 of 1870.
THURSDAY, 28TH JULY, 1870.
PRESENT:
Excellency Major-General WHITFEILD, Lieutenant-Governor.
Honorable the Chief Justice, (JOHN SMALE.)
Honorable the Colonial Secretary, (JOHN GARDINER AUSTIN.)
Honorable the Attorney General, (JULIAN PAUNCEFOTE.)
Honorable the Colonial Treasurer, (FREDERICK H. A. FORTH.)
+
Honorable HUGH BOLD GIBB.
+
Honorable PHINEAS RYRIE.
Honorable RICHARD ROWETT.
ABSENT:
Honorable the Auditor General, (WILLIAM H. RENNIE), absent on leave.
Honorable WILLIAM KESWICK.
Council meets this day at 3 P.M. by Special Summons.
Minutes of the Council held on the 13th April, are read and confirmed.
Excellency lays on the Table the Supplementary Appropriation Ordinance, 1869, and the Amended
Appropriation Ordinance, 1870, and makes the following explanatory Statement:-
I have the honor to lay before you the Supplemental Estimates of 1869, and the Estimates of 1870, with the Ordinances by which legal effect will be given
thereto.
Had health permitted, it was the intention of SIR RICHARD GRAVES MACDONNELL to have submitted the Supplemental Estimates of 1869 with the Estimates of 1871, previous to his departure from the Colony in April last.
The delay has been attended with advantage, inasmuch as the instructions recently received from the Secretary of State have compelled a revision of the Estimates of 1870, and would necessarily have involved a revision also of those of 1871, even had they been passed. Moreover, the Estimates of 1870 are now pre- pared on actual, not anticipated, results, and the unlooked for opportunity has been turned to such good account that you may have every reasonable expectation that no Supplemental Estimates will be required for the year.
The Expenditure.of 1869, for which your ratification is required, amounts to the sum of $140,777.58, but it will be a satisfaction to you to know that, not- withstanding this seeming large claim on your liberality, the actual Expenditure of the Government, including the sum now to be voted, was $93,015.14 below the provision made for it.
Look at it, however, in whatever point of view you may, it cannot but occur to your minds that the difficulties of a system must be very obvious by which the Estimates of a coming year are prepared so long in advance, and when the necessities of the current year in which they are framed are, to some extent, but