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13.
The abandonment of Babhi improvements, and the duties of Government, such as the maintenance of order and cleanliness, combined with a disregard of Crime and Piracy might enable the Executive here to diminish expenditure, but I question whether either Her Majesty's Government or the Memorialists would approve such a course, or even the alternative of borrowing money "at any cost" formerly suggested by the Memorialists, who have quite omitted to state how the money procured at such a costly rate was to be repaid. It is by such changes as in some measure abandoning our duties where the competition is attended with difficulties that I conceive Her Majesty's Government will find a safer and more equitable mode of consulting the general interests of the Colony than by following the vast majority of the mercantile body, though perhaps they are more liberal and certainly equally enlightened as their counterparts in the Colonies.
14. I must also observe that, considering the very full financial explanations placed by myself before the Public, I might have expected, and it would have seemed more decorous if Your Lordships had enabled the Memorialists to controvert the various statements and conclusions in my reply, as they say they previously could do. It is insufficient merely to repeat that they represent every class in the ...