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by Major General Brown whether the Cost of the temporary Batteries at Hong Kong, Amounting to £ 425.11.6, ought not to be defrayed from Colonial funds.
I am desired to acquaint you, for information of Earl de Grey, that the Duke of Newcastle thinks that in creating these Batteries in such haste, the Acting Governor and his Council were influenced by apprehensions which the state of affairs at that time did not render necessary.
If therefore they had proceeded exclusively on their own judgment and in opposition to that of competent Officers of the Army and Navy, and if the effect had been to place batteries in ineligible positions, there might have been good reasons for their bearing consequent expenses. But in point of fact they acted in full concurrence with the senior Military and Naval Authorities on the Spot, both as to the expediency of
**Changes Made:** 1. Corrected "Stong kong" to "Hong Kong" (Rule 3: spelling correction). 2. Corrected "€" to "£" (Rule 3: correct currency symbol). 3. Corrected "thu Atie Duche" to "the Duke" (Rule 1: reasonable correction for OCR error). 4. Corrected "of of Lewenette" to remove the repetition (Rule 1: reasonable correction for OCR error). 5. Corrected "hab of render lender here" to "did not render necessary" (Rule 1: reasonable correction for OCR error). 6. Corrected "pidgment" to "judgment" (Rule 3: spelling correction). 7. Corrected "me" to "in" (Rule 3: correct preposition). 8. Corrected "the senior Military and haval Authorities" to "the senior Military and Naval Authorities" (Rule 3: spelling correction). 9. Corrected "EX" to maintain as is since the rest of the text is not provided (Rule 7: do not rephrase or rewrite). 10. Formatted the text into paragraphs using HTMLtags as per the output requirement.