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children have been sent home, with no prospect of return many of us have given up our houses and sold our belongings, and are living in hotels and boarding-houses and messes like neither married men nor bachelors, and some of us have been compelled to abandon our policies on our lives, as we can prove to Your Excellency.
9. Were there any real hope for an early change for the better we might have continued to endure in silence, as we have done for the past several years. But we know only too well that the cost of living is on the increase, and that the higher dollar has brought us no relief. We give in Table B some comparative figures to prove that we do not exaggerate.
10. The Secretary of State has informed Your Excellency that we are better paid than the Public Servants of most other Colonies a statement that we are not in a position to controvert, as we have not the information at our disposal that might enable us to do so. Our contention is less ambitious, namely to prove that out pay is insufficient. There are however certain items in our expenses which are peculiar to the Colony, as compared with others in the tropics, which are:-coal, excessive house-rent and the great cost of clothing due both to the need of providing against very hot and very cold weather, and also to the destruction caused by the damp. Steamer fares too are higher from here to England than - from almost every other Crown Colony.
11. Table C shews that the enormous rents charged, so far from falling with the rise of silver, have greatly increased when reckoned in that metal, and enormously increased when reckoned in sterling.
12. We have laid great stress on the increasing dollar prices, because therein lies the key to our position. Under no possible circumstances could we gain by the rise of the dollar, since being paid in sterling it takes the same proportion of our salaries to make our gold purchases, whether silver is high or low. At the best, if silver prices at once and automatically adjusted themselves to the different exchanges we should be as well though no better off. But as we have shewn, silver prices so far from shewing a tendency to so adjust themselves, even slowly, are steadily on the rise.
13. Table D shews the average rate of exchange during recent years.
14. In the full confidence that we shall have Your Excellency's sympathy and assistance,
We have the honour to be,
Your Excellency's most obedient servants,
H. H. J. GOMPERTZ, Attorney General.
A. M. THOMSOx, Colonial Treasurer.
W. CHATHAM, Director of Public Works.
J. M. ATKINSON, Principal Civil Medical Officer.
A. W. BREWIN, Registrar General.
F. J. BADELEY, Captain Superintendent of Police.
L. A. M. JOHNSTON, Postmaster General.
A. SETH, Registrar, Supreme Court.
G. H. WAKEMAN, Land Officer.
EDWARD A. IRVING, Inspector of Schools.
F. A. HAZELAND, Police Magistrate.
G. H. BATESON WRIGHT, Headmaster, Queen's College.
A. G. M. FLETCHER, Asst. Colonial Secretary.
P. N. H. JONES, Assistant Director of Public Works.