they were good enough to entertain some coufi- denco in my administration, yet entertained doubts of the possibility of our having so large a balance as $71,000 of revenue in excess of! ́expenditure. My hon. friend the Treasurer. has now sent to me the returns, closed and certified, of the first three quarters of the year, and these returns will enable us so far to test the accuracy of what I auticipated. I find that, in the first tbroe quarters of this year, the revenue has not only been in excess of tho ex penditure, but has so far exceeded it that we have a surplus on the nine months' transactions of $85,920. Therefore it is possible that at the close of the year 1878, instead of 871,000, we may have a surplus of $100,000. You will be interested to learn what are the items which give this increase of revenue above expenditure and which exhibit an excess over the previous year. This is indeed a question of very great interest. I find, for instance, that our actual receipts for the year 1877 from leased lands amounted to $120,554. Now if our rent-roll produced exactly the same sum in 1878 as it did in 1877 we should get in the nine months to which I am now referring $90,416. Bui I am happy to say that the rent-roll of the colony is increasing, and that in the nine mouths instead of having only $90,000 we have $105,000, | and I look forward to having at the close of the year from that important source of revenue $135,000, instead of the $120,000 wo bad last year. Now, taking the item of stamps. In pass- ing I should say to you that in the return of our rent roll I do not include that which really would be an item of capital, namely, premiums on the sale of the land. I am dealing now with the rent roll and that alone. We may receive before the end of the year considerable sums of preminu on the sales of lands, but I prefer to take no notice of it because it is eating into our capital. What I am now dealing with is healthy revenue. Next, taking the item of stamps, the amount actually received last year was $118,488; in other words, that ought to give us for the nine months of the prosent year $88.866; but instead of that it has given as $95,603, and the total sum to be de- rived from stamps this year I calculate at $127,000. I am bound here to say that, to what- evor souroo may be traced the increase in the rent roll, it would not perhaps be proper to assume that the whole increase in the reveune from stamps is derived from a similar source, for it has been my duty to institute since I have come to the Colony certain prosecutions under the Stamp Ordinance. I have been favoured by the Collector of Stamps with a return for the last three or four years, from which it appears that in 1874 there was one prosecution under the Stamp Ordinance against one defendant. In the year 1975 there were no prosecutions. In the year 1876 there were no prosecutions. Last year there were six prose. cutions against nine defendants; and up to August, which is the date of the return this year, there were ten prosecutions against nine. tean defendants. In all cases the defendants were Chinese. As you are aware, I am forcing the Stamp Ordinance against them, They were not called upon to pay in former years at least, such is my opinion-their proper proportion of the stamp revenne. They are doing so now, and no doubt a portion at least of the considerable increase which has taken place in the revenue from stamps is due to the Feause I have indicated. I may say before leaving the subject that in the opinion of com petent authorities there were more erasions by Chinese of the Stamp Ordinance in the years 1875 and 1876, when there were no pro- secutions, than in 1877 and 1878 when there have been prosecutions. Now, gentlemen, another item in which our revenue has increased is that of postage. The actual receipts in the twelve months of 1977 amounted to $62,675; that would give us for the nine months of this year $47,000. But instead of that we have got in the nine months $66,000; so that we have actually received in the nine months of the present year more than we did in the twelve months preceding it. In my statement to the Council last November I mentioned what every honourable mombor con- sidered one of the best tests of our prosperity, and that is the junk trade. Our revenue from that source last year was $19,051. That ought to give us for nine months $14,289. In fact we have received in the nine months $15,551. From i the registry of cargo boats we received last! year $2,347. The actual receipts for the first nine mouths of 1878 were $2,531. I need not remind you that that increase probably represents! nourly the whole increase of the year, because in │
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the case of cargo bosts fow are registered in the last quarter of the year. In the item of light duos I find that last year the sura total was $11,984. That ought to give us in round numbers for the zine months $11,000, whereas we have got $13,928, and I expect to receive altogether from light dues 'not far short of $18,000. There is another item of some importance, and that is the item in the estimates called interest, Now, at the close of 1876 there was a sum of $20,000 in the Chartered Banks at 5 per cont. On the 31st March, 1877, that sum amounted to $80,000. $80,000 at 5 per cent. gives $4,000 per annum profit. On the 30th June, 1877, it was increased $160,000, and on the 30th September, 1877, it was still further in- creased to $210,000. On the last day of the year 1877, it amounted to $270,000, and at this i date we have in the Chartered Banks of this Colony, earning interest at 5 per cont., the sum of $380,000, a sum not only exceeding any investment of that kind heretofore, but more than double any sum hitherto saved from revenue inde. pendently of the gambling fund and lodged in the Banks at interest. -Now, gentlemen, those facta no doubt you will say are of interest, but the interest they have for the public becomes : very practical if they can enable us to do some- thing in the way of reducing taxation. There are, however, two items-comparatively small items-which we can no longer include in the revenue of the Colony, and of which I shall have a word or two to say. We have been in the habit of making considerable suns by what is called the profit on subsidiary coins. Towards the early part of the year 1877 the profit on sub- sidiary coins exceeded $20,000. Well, it is, to my mind, a nice question to consider how far this Government ought to make a profit on sub- sidiary coins. We don't coin them; they are coined in England. They are sent to us by the Imperial Government. Of course we pay for them in England, but when we got them here we get them for the convenience of the comrau- nity, and I cannot believe that it is a sound policy for this Government to make a profit out of sub- sidiary coins. I had taken that view of the mat- ter and communicated it to Mr. Austin before I received a despatch from the Secretary of State in which Lord Carnarvon adverted in pretty strong terms to the practice of making a profit out of the subsidiary coins in Hongkong; and the result, as you know, is that now any one can get enins from the Treasury. We make no profit ou them; they are supplied at the rate we have obtained them at ourselves. The next item that! will no longer figure in the revenue returns of the Colony of Hongkong amounted last year to $7,023; it is the item for brothel licences. On that subject I have received some despatches from Her Majesty's Government. A question was lately asked in the House of Comnions, andi a copy of that question was sent to me by Sirt Michael Hicks Beach, in a despatch in which he! said:
I have the honour to inform you that a question, of which I enclose a copy, has been asked in the House of Commons as to the revenue derived under Ordin. ance 10 of 1867 from houses of ill-fame in the Colony I under your Government.
It has been alleged that the balance of the fnud now ! in hand amounts to $50,000, and though I can scarcely think that such is the case, I should wish to have full information on the subject.
It therefore, this point has not already been dealt with by the Commission, I request that you will either invite them to include in their report a statement of the condition of any fund that has been formed under the 66th Section of the Ordinance, together with any recommendation on the subject that they may think proper to make; or that you will obtain this informa. tion from the records of the Treasury and report to me at an early date the resalt of your inquiry.
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I sent this despatch at once to the Commissiou, -two of the members of the Commission are now sitting at this table--and they lost no time in ascertaining the facts Sir Michael Hicks- Beach wanted to know. Going back only as fur as Ordinance 10 of 1867-which came into operation in April, 1868-from April, 1868, to April, 1877, the Colony received from brothel licences $74,404. During the same period. hospital fees from prostitutes amounted to $9,849; fines of prostitutes and brothel-keepers, $11,362, making a sum total of $95,616. Adding to that the sum that had been obtained from similar sources for the few years before the passing of; that Ordinance, and then deducting from the smu total the cost of the Look Hospital and the salaries of the Inspectors of Brothels, I a afraid that, instead of $50,000, the revenue of the Colony has been something like $80,000 or $90,000 under that Ordinance. When I looked back at what had occurred when the Ordinance passed. I saw that the particular clause which rendered
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