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From these extracts it can be only concluded that it was not the wish or intention of the Home Government to levy a heavy tax on steamers. On the existing scale many steamers are paying heavier dues than Mr. Chamberlain (2) contemplated.
In 1896-1897 a fair average Ocean steamer was 3,000 tons register tonnage dues at 1 cent $28 at 24 cents $70.
To-day Ocean steamers are often 5,000 tons register tonnage dues at 1 cent $50 at 2 cents $125.
C. -Harbour Police should be, and we believe is, paid out of light dues.
Hospitals. Markets.
Water supply.
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Services under this heading are paid for by Shipping Companies at market rates to the financial benefit of the Colony-there is no favour the obligation is mutual.
Sailors' Home pays for itself we believe, and it would be interesting to learn what share the Government pays for any advantages derived therefrom by the Shipping.
Wharves and Piers.-Government have charged Shipping Companies very highly for Crown Rent, &c., and piers and wharves are erected by private enterprise. Shipping pays directly for every service rendered.
Cost of Harbour Department is more than paid for out of Light Dues.
EL
f-Free Port.-Shipping Companies do not protest against extra taxation altogether on their own account; they can always even up" on rates so that ultimately all additional taxation is met by consumers, but the Government should tread cautiously in the direction of increasing the burdens on shipping, for if taxation is increased beyond reason, owners will have to protect themselves by increasing rates to the disadvantage of Hongkong vis d vis other ports.
The difference of even half a cent per picul might mean that transhipment of thousands of tons of cargo would be diverted from Hongkong and delivered direct to Manila, Shanghai, Canton and elsewhere. The Shipping Companies can view such a transfer of trade with equanimity, because they can deliver and collect cargo in Manila or Shanghai or elsewhere with equal facility, but the Hongkongovernment would realise, when perhaps it was too late, that they had driven trade into the hands of a competing port, willing and anxious to secure the trade.
In the Philippines the American Government has lately spent large sums in improving their harbours, and the ports are absolutely free-no tonnage dues or light dues-and as a consequence railway material and other home cargo which used to come via Hongkong is now carried direct to the Philippines, while hemp and other exports which previously were transhipped at this port, are increasingly shipped direct from Manila.
Shanghai are similarly improving the Whangpoo, not at the expense of shipping, but in order to attract it. Shanghai is not a free port and does not claim to be, but how is the 14 cents per ton made up? China charges tonnage dues at the rate of 4 mace per net register ton: 61 mexican cents for 4 months. For this levy steamers have the privilege of calling at any and all China Ports as many times as they like for a period of 4 months without extra charge of any kind, and should steamers be laid up during the period an extension is granted. Contrast the services rendered by the Chinese Government with that by the Hongkong Government. There is no comparison. The China Coast is one of the best lighted in the world and the service second to none. On some of the regular coasting lines the charge of 4 mace every 4 months actually works out less than the Hongkong dues of 1 cent per net register ton levied every time a steamer calls.
7.—If it is correct that the Colony does not owe its prosperity to Shipping it will not be disputed we presume that it is the trade which attracts it here. If that trade is driven else- where by excessive taxation either direct or indirect it will be lost to the Colony but not to the Shipping which can readily follow it. How easily Shipping followed the trade to Manchester when the Canal was opened, how quickly it left Macao for Hongkong and Chefoo for Tsingtan, when lack of atten ion to its approaches in the one case and railway development in the other carried the produce of the hinterlands to the neighbouring ports.