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the offices of Colonial Secretary and Auditor General, with the abolition of the office of Treasurer, the latter being... accomplished by using the Bank's arrangement which might be made. One or more of the present Treasury clerk's would be employed at such Bank to keep the book's as required by Her Majesty's Treasury Regulations and I believe such a system is quite practicable. I also have reason to suppose that an opportunity might be found for trying sooner than that the experiment of amalgamating the offices of Colonial Secretary and Treasurer.
Some Legislation would probably be necessary to give effect to the plan of which the above is a sketch, but I cannot see great difficulty in the way, whilst the Auditor General with whom I have conversed on the subject considers it quite practicable. About two years ago or more I had some thought, when the Colony was Bankrupt, of proposing a diminution of Offices. The abolition of the Treasury together with the amalgamation of the Colonial Secretary's and some other office seemed naturally to suggest itself as a feasible plan but now that the Mint establishment has been abolished I do not see much scope for diminishing in any other way the working hands of the Machine of Government here without impairing its efficiency.
8. I do not however pretend to have...