314
Secretary of State, it cannot be supposed that an independent Auditor can be maintained here permanently on any such salary as $3,500 a year. A Committee of Civil Servants, appointed to consider the question of Salaries in connection with the decreased value of the dollar, has just proved to demonstration that a married Officer, in the position of the Head of a Department, cannot live here in the most moderate comfort on a less salary than $6,900 a year. The conclusions of this Committee are supported by the un-official members of Council and the most experienced residents here. It is both useless and undesirable to try to ignore un- deniable facts. We should be told, and told justly, that an Officer in the position of an independent Auditor must be a man of good education and of a certain social standing. He would either come out married or would marry here. And if we should attempt to establish such an Officer here on a less salary than is paid to other Heads of Departments (who have just proved that their present pay is not nearly sufficient) we should simply add one more to the (I am sorry to say) too long list of public servants who have come out here to find that they have been deluded, and whose paramount anxiety, from the time they make that unpleasant discovery, is how to obtain from the Government the bare means of living and of keeping out of debt. In relation to such cases an ounce of prevention is worth a
pound of cure.
10. The Colonial Secretary would of course require compensation if he were deprived of the small salary of $960 paid him for supervising the Audit Office. His total income is $7,200 a year. In the face of the Report to which I have alluded, it will perhaps not be argued that this is too much, even for the Secretarial work alone. Any idea of saving under this head may therefore be dismissed.
11. Nor do I think that an independent Auditor, responsible to the Imperial Government, but also with continual Colonial claims on his attention, would be able to audit Military or Naval accounts. Certainly he would not without an increase of staff. The total expense of the new arrangement would therefore be about as follows;
Audit Office, Staff
Salary of Auditor
at $480 each
$6,488
6,900
Extra Copying clerks in, say, 6 departinents, 2,880
Contribution to cost of Comptroller General's
establishment, say about £200, or
1,300
$17,568
The increased expenditure in Stationery and Postage would bring this up to $18,000 and more.
12. Now a small extra expenditure would be well incurred in promoting efficiency. But I have endeavoured to show that an Imperial Audit is not neces- sarily a more efficient Audit, and in view of the satisfactory working of the present Department, I do not think that even the less objectionable scheme of a local Audit carried on by an independent Auditor (which, I admit, seems to promise some advantages) would justify so considerable an annual expenditure.
Hongkong, 14th November, 1889.
A. LISTER,
Acting Colonial Secretary.