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From E. C. BAYLEY, Esq., Secretary to the Government of India, Home Department, to the Acting Colonial Secretary, Hong-Kong,-(No. 3944, dated Simla, the 27th August 1867).
I AM directed to acknowledge the receipt of your letter No. 297, dated the 6th June last, stating the objection of His Excellency the Governor of Hong- Kong to the proposition that a certain monthly deduction should be made from the pay of the Sikhs enlisted into the Hong-Kong Police, and carried to the account of each man, sufficient to cover the cost of his return passage, and to allow him a moderate sum for his maintenance in India during his journey homewards,
2. In reply, I am directed to state that the Governor General in Council considers it highly important that the men, even if dismissed, should have some assured means of returning to their homes, instead of having the prospect of being left destitute in a strange land. I am desired to state, for His Excellency's inform- ation, that even British soldiers, convicted of serious offences, are allowed a return passage from India to England, and that convicts, transported from British India, are, on the expiry of their sentences, provided by the Government with the means of reaching their homes. I am to say that the Governor General in Council does not in any way doubt that the amplest consideration would ordinarily be shewn to the Sikhs who have engaged to serve at Hong-Kong; but it cannot be doubted that the Government of Hong-Kong must, in ordinary course, find the discharge of some of these men for misconduct unavoidable, and the Governor General in Council feels assured that it will be materially for the interest of the Colony that there should be no possible risk of such men being left destitute and without the means of reaching their homes. Any one accidental instance of this kind will, the Governor General in Council feels assured, do more harm to the discipline of the force at Hong-Kong, and to the prospect of recruiting in India, than the concession which His Excellency has asked for-a concession which, as has been shown, is extended to the rank and file of Her Majesty's Army in India without any injurious effect in its discipline, and which might be effected in the manner which has already been proposed, without any real cost to the Colony.
3. At any rate the Governor General in Council feels so strongly the im- policy and the injustice of leaving Sikhs to shift for themselves when dismissed from the service at such a distance from their homes, that he will reluctantly be compelled to forbid any further enlistment in India for service in China, unless provision is made for this object either in the manner desired by the Government of India, or otherwise as the Government of Hong-Kong may deem expedient.
4. The Governor General in Council, therefore, hopes that the Government of Hong-Kong will still be able to make some such arrangement.
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