254
on account
Colony, Superintendency and Consulates.
From these papers it appears that the estimated expenditure of 18469 on account of the Colony, excluding the sum required for Public Works, amounts to £39,119; which, taking the revenue as previously stated, will give an excess of the permanent and ordinary Colonial expenditure over the revenue of £13,687.
The Public Works in progress and to be executed amount to £13,076, of which the sum £8,000 is on account of the proposed Government House. Those in progress already sanctioned amount to £1,637, while those it is considered necessary to commence amount to £3,439.
Your Lordship will observe a considerable falling off in the Revenue; this arises from the substitution of opium Licenses for a strict Monopoly, as was reported in my Predecessor's Despatch No. 232 of 23 July 1867; from the recovery during 1867 of certain arrears rent due for former years; from the resumption by Government of certain Lots of Ground on the Petition of Individuals; and from other causes detailed at the end of the estimate itself.
The Drafts on the Parliamentary Grants for Colonial purposes for the present year, I find amount to £16,000; this leaves at my disposal £18,200, presuming the Grant to have been, agreeably to Sir John Davis's requisition, £34,200. I have however already (in Despatch No. 11½ of the 10th April) explained to your Lordship that, in consequence of a detailed Estimate of Public Works having been called for from the Surveyor General, the calculation upon which that requisition was founded was erroneous.
I think it right to remark that, by the 48th Paragraph of the Instructions to...