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that the appointment of a Retrenchment Committee is neither necessary nor desirable I have therefore the honour respectfully to advise Your Lordship not to accede to the prayers of the Memorialists.
20. I have also to beg Your Lordship to pardon the inordinate length of this despatch. If more time had been available, I might have been able to curtail or compress it, but I was anxious not to lose a mail in forwarding the Memorial to Your Lordship, and although the Appropriation Ordinance was passed in Council on the 30th November, 1892, and the protest thereagainst presented as long ago as the 14th ultimo, it was only on last Monday afternoon that I received the Memorial.
I have the honour to be, My Lord,
Your Lordship's most obedient,
humble servant,
The Right Honourable
THE MARQUESS OF RIPON,
Her Majesty's Principal Secretary of State
for the Colonies,
&c.,
&c.,
&c.
Enclosure No. 1.
WILLIAM ROBINSON,
Governor.
MY LORD MARQUIS,
LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL CHAMBER,
HONGKONG, 12th January, 1893,
1. We, the Unofficial Members of the Legislative Council of Hongkong, have the honour to hand you herewith enclosed copy of a protest, dated Hongkong the 13th day of December ultimo, laid by us on the table of the Council for record in the Minutes of Council, under the provisions of Rule No. 32 of the Standing Rules and Orders. This protest is the formal expression of our dissent from the decision of the Council in reading a third time and passing, by means of the official majority, the Appropriation Ordinance for 1893-(Ordinance No. 12 of 1892)-in the form in which it has been assented to by the Governor and forwarded to your Lordship.
2. We pray your Lordship to take this protest into consideration, and to give effect to it. We pray you further to advise her Most Gracious Majesty the QUEEN to refuse her Assent to that Ordinance.
(a) The main question debated in Council on the consideration of this Appropria- tion Bill, was whether the salaries of the principal Civil Servants of the Colony should or should not be reduced to the scale in force in the Colony in 1890, or whether provision should be made for their payment in 1893 at the rates authorized for 1891 and 1892.
(b) In the Finance Committee all the Unofficial Members (five) of Council voted unanimously for the reduction of the salaries, and carried Resolutions amending the Estimates for 1893 in that sense, and reducing the corresponding items in the Appropriation Bill. In Committee of Council, where the Official Members are always in a majority, these votes and items, as originally proposed, were restored by this Official majority, against the unanimous vote of the Unofficial Members; the Bill was thus reported in its original form and not as amended in Finance Committee, was read a third time, and passed. It has since been assented to by His Excellency the Governor, in the name and on behalf of the QUEEN, and published in the Hongkong Government Gazette of 3rd December ultimo.
3. The Unofficial Members submit, for your Lordship's consideration, that in Committee of Council on the Appropriation Bill for 1893, the votes of the Official Members-each of whom were directly and personally interested from a pecuniary point of view in the rejection of the Amendments proposed and supported unanimously by the Unofficial Members for reduction of salaries generally—should not have been