any knowledge acquired in the past, and allowances of the Registrar General and Harbor Master's departments. These have been written in Red Ink by me. I see but one guide to render necessary by the greatly increased duties, which will immediately devolve on them under the new Registration, and Harbor and Boats Ordinances, No. 3 and 4 of this year.
Where the results of such a very extensive change in the Administrative details of the Government of the peculiar Chinese population and vessels frequenting this Colony are still only conjectural, and whilst the amount of permanent Staff required to meet the new duties is a matter necessarily to be decided rather by future experience than fixed principle, the principle is to have in the first instance a perfectly competent staff rather over than below the work suddenly thrown on them. It would be, if not fatal, yet at least greatly detrimental to the success of the new Ordinances to allow the business, which they create, to become entangled by arrears, and thus add the inconveniences of departmental mismanagement to those, which must be inseparable from so comprehensive a change in previous habits and practice.
The arrangement of the details...