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creting was not required till 1894 is inaccurate. What Mr. Chadwick recom- mended was that earthen floors should be prohibited and this recommendation was given effect to by Section 62 of the Public Health Ordinance 1887 which provided that "the floor of every area and of every basement storey shall be properly asphalted, paved or covered over with a layer of good concrete at least 9 inches thick."
The ground floors of a majority of houses were accordingly paved with tiles till the law of 1894 male an absolutely impervious material compulsory.
In the same paragraph the Petitioners refer to the want of an Improvement Fund and complain that one has not been established. In this connection we would invite attention to the enclose·l statement marked D. which shows the total revenue and expenditure and separately the expenditure on Public Works Extraordinary for each year from 1883 to 1900 inclusive, together with the expen litur. of the second of the two loans raised by the Colony during that period.
It should also be borne in mind that in 1894 the financial condition of the Colony appeared to the Un-official Members of Council to be in such an unsatisfac- tory state that they asked for and obtained the appointment of a Retrenchment Committee with a view to effecting retrenchments in the public expenditure.
The financial returns in enclosure D. show that the ordinary revenue of the Colony was not sufficient to meet the expenditure on account of public works ex- traordinary, without having recourse to two loans anounting in all to £400,000. It is difficult therefore to see how an Improvement Fund could have been created except by a further loan or by increased taxation. It would have been undesirable for many reasons to increase the public debt of the Colony and any rise in taxation would most certainly have been unacceptable.
Enclosure D.
See Ordinance 11 of 1886.
Sse Ordinance 2 of 1893.
7. With regard to paragraph 10 it may be noted that there was no necessity to offer a premium for the best design of Chinese hous, because several designs have been gratuitously offered. A recommendation was made that a block of model Chinese houses should be built in Taipingshan but the enterprise did not commend itself to the Government who had spent over $800,000 of Public Funds in resuming and laying out the property.
8. In paragraph 13 the Petitioners touch on the question of hawking in the public streets.
By means of hawkers the poorer classes can obtain food cheaper than they can in the markets. One of the predisposing causes of Plague is want of nutrition, and various Committees which have examined this subject have advocated the retention of the system under a certain control. This control is exercised by the Police, and officers are especially told off to prevent nuisances being created by the hawkers.
The complaints referred to were made by an individual member of the Sanitary Board, and on investigation were found as far as any actual nuisance was concerned to be exaggerated.
9. In paragraph 15 an extract is quoted from a letter of the Chamber of Com- merce in 1894 in which the Chamber stated that there existed a widespread belief that Mr. Chadwick's scheme of drainage had not been carried out on the original lines, and that the separate system had been inore generally applied than was intended.
It will be remembered that in 1889 questions having arisen as to the system of sewerage to be adopted, Mr. Chadwick re-visited the Colony to initiate upon his own responsibility a scheme of drainage. Mr. Chadwick made three reports dated the 1st of July, 1890, and published in the Government Gazette of the 27th September, 1890. To the extract from the report on the sewerage of the High