Consular Ordinance N° 3 of 1847, which enacts that the Consuls with certain Assessors over all Civil suits shall have jurisdiction whatever, subject to an appeal to the Supreme Court of Hongkong, with the further appeal to the Privy Council, in all cases above £500.
I have likewise added to the efficacy of the Criminal jurisdiction of the Consuls, by adopting in Consular Ordinance Nr. 2 of 1847, the provisions of an order by Her Majesty in Council, for the Government of British Subjects in the Levant.
I am not in the least surprised at the Committee having been misled as to the real state of things at Hongkong, when I examine the nature of some of the evidence, which they had no opportunity of correcting, by evidence on the other side, from Government Officers lately arrived from Victoria.
The most remarkable cases of mis-statement will now be noticed.
122 Mr. R. M. Martin having in 1844 hazarded some crude opinions regarding the settlement, thinks it necessary to maintain them still. He states that the total expenditure on account of Hongkong for one year was £500,000. I have just shown that the Civil Expenditure for 1847 was £50,959, and the Revenue £31,078, leaving only £19,881 chargeable to the Home Treasury. I will let him make out the rest of the half million himself.
In drawing a distinction between the use of spirits and the use of opium, Mr. Martin states that spirits are not deleterious; "spirits contain the element of life; opium does not contain those elements." What that element or those elements of life may be, forming a component part of spirits, Mr. Martin did not inform the committee. I must state that the Emperor never appended the answer attributed to him by Mr. Martin, to any Paper.