Quote for the 3rd month Scach Quarter
1st must inevitably either fall into arrears, or Main Cashier and Lien Pedlar must be personally inconvenienced by advancing large sum of money out of their own private purse; it being presumed Policemen like soldiers require their pay to the day, and make their bazaar purchases on the understanding that they shall so receive it.
The inconvenience which the Consuls at the Five ports would experience is I presume so self evident as to need no remark.
If then the Surveyor General's Department, the Consuls and the Police and Marine Magistrates Departments are to continue to draw their Instalments on Estimates which have been already approved, in regular ways, and ordinary contingencies, on Imprest, there will remain a sum of so trifling an amount to restrict that it becomes a question whether it is advisable to enforce the restriction.
In two or three years' time when the Land Office work is complete, arrangements might justifiably be made for rendering advances on Imprest altogether unnecessary, but for the present it appears that it is not advisable to check a system which experience has shown to be successful in the proper working of those departments under Government, which expend by far the largest amount of capital.
I have etc.,
Signed A. G. Shelley Auditor General.
True copy,
Frederick W. A. Boney