3.82 But in the present statement of the accounts the Auditor General proceeds on a new plan: He deducts from the total police expenses of the Colony for the year, what he estimates as a standard Police expenditure before the establishment of the Game fighting Licenses, & calls the excess "Special Police Expenses"; the total of which is $116,000.
There is no evidence to show whether this sum has been expended monthly, or what sums may have been expended on similar accounts, such as inspection, publishing & printing reports, notifications, sales etc. That these expenses are considerable is proved by the reports of the Commissioner, which show that each of the 12 licensed houses is visited every day, & the number of the frequenters of the houses accurately kept, but it is incredible that they should amount to $116,000 apart from the 24½ years as $11,182, of which $60,000, which is the difference between the more he apparently considers sanctioned, in ten of the special charges for food conduct pay & extra men which would together amount to $52,000.
The earlier authorities (1.2.83 of the list) of Lord Carnarvon & of the Duke of Buckingham are much more general in their sanction, might be considered as some authority for this ingenious thought of the Auditor General's Special Police were it not for Lord Granville's instruction (405 in the list) that clearly defined instructions of his predecessor on the 23rd of October (4 in the list) must not be exceeded without special sanction to which instruction was contained in the very despatch that calls for the gross statement of accounts, which the present obviously cooked document purports to be.
At p.38 of 1868 Papers Sir R. M. Estimates the actual expense of preparing & issuing licenses at $50; but this assumed to be sometimes by the new method, the $52,000 which actually was. This analysis also assumes that the two charges sanctioned by the State of B.C. were meant to be in addition to the regular expenses incurred by the establishment of the system that in lieu of such expenses; which assumption is not warranted by the Duke's despatch (4.4 in the list), but may be considered so if Lord his despatch No. 540 read in light of the earlier authorities, for Sir R. M. made his proposals to deal with an unavoidable surplus after paying expenses, & his silence took as consent apparently on the point.
If this method of the Auditor General be not admitted; the only alternative will be to call for an entirely fresh account of the actual expenses: the objections to which are obvious, for up to this time no separate account has evidently been kept, & in separating each detail of the