3595 Hong Kong RECEIVED 3595 5/APR 1859.
PROPOSED MINUTE OF PROTEST AGAINST "THE BOWRING PRAYA."
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A draft Ordinance entitled "An Ordinance to provide for the Erection of a Public Way along the Water Frontage of the City of Victoria" having been read the first time at the sitting of the Legislative Council on Tuesday the 4th January instant, and so read by a majority of the Council against the vote of the undersigned; and the undersigned having given due notice of his intention to protest against the second reading of the said Ordinance, doth protest accordingly, and as follows:--
First. Because any legislation whatsoever upon the subject is wholly superfluous. The line of the proposed Praya runs entirely over Crown Land, and no act of the Legislature can be necessary to entitle the Crown to construct a public way upon Crown property. Moreover, as the Crown in its Lease reserves to itself the right of re-entry and resumption upon "full and fair compensation" for every tenant-right affected, the undersigned cannot see the necessity of any legislation upon the subject. It cannot be necessary even on the score of providing the requisite facilities for carrying out the work, as the undersigned affirms (under competent legal advice) that the Crown is invested by accumulative local Ordinances, with overwhelming powers of entry upon private premises in the person of its Surveyor General, for any public purpose whatsoever.
It cannot be necessary on the score of providing a machinery for the adjustment of trespasses committed upon Crown rights by Marine Lot Holders, by reclamations of ground from the sea, all such encroachments having been measured by the Surveyor General nearly a year and a half ago, an equitable rent exacted and paid therefor, at a rate fixed by the Crown itself; and the original Lot and supplementary parcel re-registered as a whole in the Books of the Land Office,—the old difficulty having been thus finally and for ever adjusted.
The undersigned accordingly protests against this measure as a piece of superfluous legislation.
Secondly. The undersigned protests against this Ordinance on the grounds that the expenditure to which it would conduct is in broad violation of those principles of "good management" and strict economy in the administration of the finances of this Colony, which the Imperial Government can have hardly failed to have inculcated upon H. E. the Governor as recently as March 1858, in conformity with a certain correspondence which the undersigned will presently exhibit, and no doubt with a view that His Excellency might inculcate the same principles upon this Honourable Council. The Imperial Despatches no doubt warned His Excellency against allowing the Colony "to fall into financial embarrassments" through precipitate expenditure. They no doubt cautioned His Excellency against undertaking any Public Work, not called for by the immediate exigencies of the settlement, and within its immediate resources, inasmuch as Her Majesty's Government pointedly struck out the Bowring Praya from His Excellency's own indent, and excluded it from any allotment whatsoever in the Public Works of last year. The undersigned is unfortunately left to conjecture the spirit and substances of these Despatches, as His Excellency did not think proper to communicate even an abstract of them to this Honourable Council, or even allude to their existence. His Excellency was pleased merely to read to the Council, as their sole guide on the Praya Question, when
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