October 20, 1902.]
quarters be regarded as available for such (fficers as may be assigned to purely hospital | work. Dr. Thomson who is in charge of the Gaol, and has therefore to live close to that institution, and his successors in office should continue to draw the honse allowance of $720 until such time as quarters near the Gaol are provided.
7. In the case of the Inspectors of Nuisances I have caused their salaries to be set down in the scheme at approximately the equivalents of their salaries in dollars with double exchange compensation, with their house allowances of $360 per annum thrown into salary at approxi- mately 1s. 9d to the dollar. I consider these salaries large enough. The rates of increment have been altered from £10 to £5 a year in the case of the members of the Sanitary staff below the rank of Senior Inpector as the increments they at present enjoy are annual ones.
A note has been added that officers wh occupy free quarters (as some of these men d and as more of them herafter may) will drav £32 a year less.
8. In the case of the Principal Warden Victoria Gadl, I have made the to increment! annual instead of triennial. With triennia increments it would take 18 years to reach the niaximum.
9. I shall inform you in due course of accep. tances of the scheme.-I have, etc.,
W. J. GASCOIGNE, Officer Adminstering the Government.
THE JAPANESE LOAN,
FROM A SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT.]
Tokyo, 5th Cctober.
THE NATURE OF THÉ 10AN.
From an editorial which has just appeared in the Japan Times, it would seem that an attempt is made to prove that the above loan is not a loan strictly speaking and that Japan will not in consequence of it be indebted any more than she is at present to any foreign country. It is hardly necessary for me to point out that this contention is unwarranted.
JAPANESE PRESS GLAD.
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CHINA OVERLAND TRADE REPORT.
public people can understand the Government phlegm.
MR. OKUDA'S RESIGNATION,
301
It is true that the post-bellum programme of new undertakings have largely augmented ex- penditure in the extraordinary accounts without To show, before I go any further, the bad im- corresponding increase in the extraordinary re- pression made on the public mind by the receipts; but even then the excess of revenue over signation of Mr. Okud and at the same time to expenditure in total account for the same bring a little more prominently before your period stood as follows:- readers this strong character who will un. doubtedly, if he lives, be one of the lending statesman of Japau, I shall here quote what th• Tokyo papers said on the occasion.
Unusual importance was attached by several papers to the resignation of Mr. Okuda, not only because of the fact that the post he resigned is one carrying great weight, but also because of other considerations. For instance that re- signation was interpreted as indicating the Ministerial inability to carry out administrative and financial reforms of any resolute character, reforms to which the Goverument had com. mitted itself. Some even said that this It- signation might be regarded as placing a sort of barrier between the Ministry and a certain ontside force whose views Mr. Okula is sup- posed to have represented.
The Chuo and Yomiuri both treated the incident editorially, and they both regard Mr. kuda's resignation as a shadow cast by coming events. The Chuo said that the Ministerial rejection of Mr. Okuda's reform measure made it stand aghast, so astonished hal it becu by the nens.
If this news mans, as the journal fears it means, the resolution of the Govern - meut not to carry out any decisive reform measure, then Mr. Okuda's resiguation may serre as a fore-runner of a Ministerial crisis. The Yomiuri thought that the inability of the Ministry to carry our the r form desired by all classes must r flct on its prestige, and that Mr. Okuda's reignation may prove sooner or later its death wound.
THE COMING BUDGET.
Some vernacular papers assort, it is true, that there was never auy difficulty about the budget for the coming fiscal year. The Kokumin, a very well-informed paper, says, for example: "Some would have us believe that the Government is finding it very difficult to compile a satisfactory budget for the fiscal year 1903-1904. We learn, however, that the Government is in a position to balance easily the two sides of the account even by including in the budget some new undertakings in addition to carrying out without any change the portions of the continuance' works previously apportioned for next year. The only question that the Government is considering at present is the question of how to enlarge the revenue surplus, and not the question of how to balance the two sides" (so the Kokumin learns, according to the Japan Times' transla- tion). On the other haud one question which is receising the Government's attention is that of keeping in force the present increased rate of land taxation. This question of continuing the present rate is not taken up, however, with the object of meeting any prospective deficit in the budget, but it is done so rather to find means for launching a new undertaking of a positive character. In other words the object kept in view in this connection is to put in practice a third programme of naval expansion. With this naval programme shelved for the present the Government finds it not only unnecessary to continue in force the present increased rate of the tax in question, but it may without any difficulty restore that rate to its original schedule in 1904, as provided by the law as it stands. Moreover, the Government will from that year be able to annually appropriate a sum of six and a half million yen to the war-vessels re- plenishing fand,' Further, after 1905 the budget will come to show a yearly surplus of six million yen in addition to the above."
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The Japanese Press is excessively pleased at tuis happy turn of events, all the more so as it was becoming increasingly evident to thought- ful observers that the Cabinet would have difficulty in drawing up the Budget for the next financial year. The Budget aniounted at 260,000,000 yen, but the Government was reported in some quarters to be far short of that amount. To make both ends meet a great cutting down of expenses was necessary and indeed the question of cutting down adminis- trative expenses is one that has been very pro- minently before the public for the last two years. It is the powerful plauk in Marquis Ito's programme; and, as all parties proposed to seo the necessity of it, the Katsura Cabinet retained the services of Mr. Okuda who had b en Director of the Legislative Bureau and Chairman of the Administrative Reform Commission in the Ito administration. Mr. Okuda accordingly continued to draw up the programme of retrenchment upon which he was engaged at the time of Marquis Ito's resignation, and about a week ago he finished it and prese.ted it to his colleagues. Now Mr. Okuda is a strong self-willed man, although a young one, and having moreover no particular reason for sparing the Katsura Cabinet a certain amount of unpopularity in official c rcles by the recom mendation of drastic reforms, he handed in a programme which is generally understood to have been of a fairly drastic character, dealing pretty exhaustively with various defects in the Japanese administrative system and recom- mending in particular a great curia Iment of the administrative expenses; at present far too high on account of the delegation by officials of their work to minor officials and the passing of it on by these to others still farther down the official scale. Another theory he recommended was the oreation or re-establishment of a Public Works Department; but all these suggest ons were ignored by the Cabinet, whereupon Mr. Okada immediately resigned. His resignation caused some little excitement in political circles for it seemed to imply that the Government while the estimates for the current fiscal year
would not bother its head about retrenchment; but now that the news of the loan has been made
However this may be, there is no doubt that Japan's finances are by no means in a bad state, as according to the official figures the excess of revenue over expenditure in ordinary accounts during the last six years was in round numbers
as follows:--
1896-1897 1897-1898
1898-1899
1
1899-1900
1900-1901
1501-1902
are:--
1902-1903
yen 4.0 0,000 16,000,900 13 000,000 : 9.000,00€ 43,009,000 41,000,000
yen 48,000,000
1896-1-97
1897-1898
1898-1899
1899-1900
1900-1901
1901-1902
yen 18,002.000 2,701,000
296,000
88,000
3,10+,000 289,000
The state of thing disclosed by these figures should be regarded as satisfactory when we con. sider that the total expenditures in these years are four times the total expenditures in 1895- 1896 when they stood at 85,17,180 you. Опе bad feature in Japan's financial po.ition was of course the fact that her people are taxed to the last limit, taxed far mo.e heavily than the most heavily taxed peoples of Eur upe when we take into consideration the comparative poverty of the Japanoso Another bad feature was that their surpluses were devoared by ever-increasing extraordinary expenditure that necessitated the floating of loans and seemed to keep the country continuously hovering over the brink of finan- cial ruin.
It is said that in the present fiscal year the Government had determined to float none of the usual home bonds, but to meet the extraordi- nary expenditure with the surplus out of the ordinary rovenue, which some journals assert to be nearly 5,000,000 yen. In other words the Government meant to meet out of its ordinary receipts the expenses of the railways, telephones, and other official undertakings that were origi- ually included in the list of the works to be carried out by means of loans.
THE ARRANGER OF THE LOAN.
Mr. Soyeda, the Director of the Inda trial Bunk, the institution which arranged the loan with the H. & S. Bank, is the lion of the hour. The Nichi Michi has interviewed him and
obtained from him a history of the transaction. He says that the Bank continued off and on after its establishment to receive comparatively small applications from foreigners desirous of investing their money in Japanese bonds. In May last the Bank was approach d by a certain party as to a big sale of bonds, but the negotiations ended in failure as the conditions offered wero not quite satisfactory. The overtures were renewed by the same party towards the latter end of August with the result already stated.
Mr. Soyeda thinks this stroke of business just in the ordinary day's work of the Bank, which gets nothing out of it, he says, but increased prestige. The only conspicuous feature in the present transaction is, he thinks, the fact that the 5 per cent. bonds for which a ma ket could not be found at home can be sold in a foreign country. He is specially glad to hear from London that the English market is favourably disposed to the sale of the bonds,
SATISFACTION OVER THE LOAN.
What pleases not only Mr. Soyeda but all Japanese in connection with this loan is the fact that it has been concluded without any loss of amour propre on the part of Japan, in other
words that neither the Industrial Bank nor the Japanese Government has been made to submit to hard terms such as would scarcely be demanded of a South American Republic but which is
considered by some financiers to be good enough bonds is to be endorsed in British gold and the for Japan. Of course the face value of the
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bonds are to be endorsed as instrument of exchange. Mr. Soyed. airily dismisses this as a little arrangement only for convenience sake," but, however that may be, he is perfectly right in declaring the present transaction a great advance on the sale of the war bonds several years ago.
The price of the bonds is to be remitted to Japan as soon as the bonds shall have reached London, and probably a greater part may come in by the end of the year and the rest by February next at the latest. Mr. Soyeda thinks that the great secrecy kept about the transao- tiou till it had been coucinded was an important cause of success, and he hopes that with this sale both the Government and the Bank of | Japan will be enabled more effi iently to con
duct their respective parts in the economy of the country.