8
220 9.
enclosed Estimates incompatible with objects more important than mere clearness of accounts, I hope Your Lordship will be induced to obtain a modification of any instruction likely to deprive Members of Council and others of those facilities for comprehending and referring to all details of the Public Expenditure, which the enclosed reformed Estimates appear to afford.
7. If I were not apprehensive of being thought urgent, and perhaps even premature—notwithstanding the long years during which Her Majesty's Governors and Civil Officers, at least in all Crown Colonies, have been obliged to feel their way darkly and with hesitation through the voluminous details of the Annual Estimates in the old form, I would even urge on Your Lordship the expediency of enforcing, wherever Her Majesty's Government has power to do so, a similar form for all Colonial Estimates, by which I merely mean a form similar in the simple principle aimed at, though the application of that principle by others would no doubt soon lead to still greater improvements.