with the enormously high house rent-- more than absorbs all our income, and before the month is over our pay is quite gone, and we find ourselves embarrassed to provide for the deficiencies, which we find it difficult to make up, and insensibly we run ourselves in debt. On the other hand we have hard work and duty to perform day and night, this as well as the high cost of living in this place, we are certain are known facts to you, and we need not take time in describing.
We would however beg leave to point out to you the comparatively better pay allotted to all the subordinate Officers and clerks in the various other civil departments of the Colony, and the amount of work they have to perform that you may yourself judge of the truth of our complaint. Our first Class Clerk, Mr. Barradas, for instance, who has the Booths and Accounts Office in charge of, besides the general duty of the Establishment, to attend to, (in spite of his 10 years service in the Post Office) gets only £300 per annum, whilst the first Classes of other departments receive no less than £400 and work only from 10A.M. to 4P.M. each day exclusive of Sundays, and whose duty and responsibility bear no comparison to his. Our 2nd Clerk Mr Leiria, who in his ... year of service, receives only £250 instead...