Who have been allowed leave to
sinduce the... to reentist; this may be deemed perhaps to be within the terms of the general sanction with reference to Police Expenditure, but I think Sir A. Kennedy should be told that when he proposes to charge against the Special Fund any unusual items, he should report them at once for approval, & not leave them to be included in a yearly return. (Had Sir R. MacDonnell done this on the past, a good deal of correspondence would have been saved).
There are included in the two Returns all the expenses connected with the enlistment last year of the 45 policemen from Scotland.
Sir A. Kennedy now requests in another despatch to be allowed to make similar charges for 20 more men. Sir R. MacDonnell's proceeding on the last occasion may have been somewhat irregular; the exact facts are that in 1869 an application to enlist 30 men at the carpenter's rate was refused by Lord Granville on the ground that the amount for Police Purpose, though limited, was not to be charged to the Special Fund; in 1871 General Whitfield sent home a requisition for men, referring to the correspondence of 1869, stated that the general funds of the Colony could now bear the expense & that he remitted £5000 by the same mail to meet it. In reply, Lord Kimberley said, "Your proposal meets with my approval with reference to the special Estimates Fund." Subsequently, the ordinary Estimates came home in which the required charge was voted from General Revenue; the amounts as voted were noticed in the minutes of the Estimates, and the Estimates were sanctioned.
Subsequently, on Sir R. MacDonnell's return to the Colony, he eliminated from the Accounts all their expenditure connected with the Scotch Policemen (amounting to rather more than £2000), and charged it again to the Special Fund without reporting it. This he did on the authority of the letter addressed to him while in England; that letter gave considerable latitude, but I never understood that it was intended to supersede the definite instructions on this point given by Lord Granville, which were based on the principle (I think, enunciated in Parliament) that the Imperial funds should not be devoted to defraying the costs ordinarily borne by the Colony. At all events, those instructions appear to me to apply.
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