perity" it has achieved in the last four years can only be equalled in the Australian Colonies." This is in truth a tantalizing contrast to the state of things at present existing in Japan, that Hongkong, too, has had its gloomy days; days when the local newspapers lifted up their voices and cried: "The fate of Hongkong is sealed. What little trade we ever possessed here has been all but extinguished." Now, however, that "little trade" supports a community paying taxes to the amount of a million and a quarter dollars per annum, and includes an item of sixty-eight million dollars yearly with India. There ought not to be much more doubt as to whether the Island of Victoria is a military or a trading station, neither ought the colonists to grumble any longer about that old bête noire, the contingent to the red-coats.
The question about the trades and manufactures is answered no less satisfactorily. Sir John cites a great number of industries now successfully carried on in Hongkong, amongst them a ketchup manufactory, from which hundreds of barrels are forwarded every year to Messrs. Crosse and Blackwell, who bottle the same and reship a good deal of it to China! In this context, it is interesting to remark that the trade in Bombay yarn is steadily increasing -- from $1,706,913 in 1877 to $5,251,246 in 1880 -- and that the rapid development of activity in this and other items promises one day "to outstrip, and perhaps enable the Indian Government to curtail, the trade in opium."
It is, however, to the Governor's remarks with regard to the third question that we particularly desire to direct our readers' attention. The large item of $1,700,000 on the transfer of property, almost entirely for commercial purposes, to the Chinese community during the last eighteen months, is justified by the fact that in four years and four months the native population of the Colony has increased by 20,582. Beyond a doubt, Sir John Hennessy's so-called "philo-Chinese" policy has had the effect of attracting considerable numbers of Chinese to Hongkong, of inducing them to settle there, and of thus increasing the prosperity not of the native community alone, but also of the foreign community, for Sir John is plainly of the opinion that the two are inseparably connected.
Our northern contemporary, after making reference to the well-known mercantile qualities of the Chinese, which make the Chinese Empire a safely progressive country, directs the attention of the Japanese to the great advancement made by the natives in Hongkong in the course of the last few years. Specially referring to Sir John Pope Hennessy's speech on the Census Returns, he says:
"There are lessons here for the Japanese as well as for ourselves. They will do well to study the commercial qualities that make China a safely progressive country, and we shall do well to remember that, as in Hongkong, so also here, the prosperity of the country we live in is our prosperity. Native and foreign interests are one. An immense stride in the right direction will have been taken when this faith is subscribed to by both sides. If the denizens of some supernal region might look down on us with an intelligent eye, they could scarcely fail to marvel at this strange idiosyncrasy that impels us perpetually to proclaim ourselves aliens by speech and action, while our interests and our desires alike dictate a diametrically opposite course. After all these years, we have barely succeeded in finding room to stand here and there on the verges of Japanese territory, and have not yet begun to make it plain that Western capital and Western enterprise are what the country wants far more than either the abolition of extra-territoriality or the revision of the tariff. The Chinese are fast discovering the invigorating effects of foreign contact. They held back at first, but sagacity has with them supplied the place of versatility, and we dare almost predict that, unless Japan speedily becomes more liberal, she will be distanced in the race despite the long start her early activity gave her."
Those of our readers who know anything of statistics, and who are sufficiently interested in the real progress made by this Colony during the past few years, to devote the time necessary for a thorough comparison of the Governor's speech and figures on the Census Returns with the respective criticisms of our local papers, the two above-named Japanese journals, and the Shanghai Courier, will have little difficulty in arriving at a satisfactory conclusion as to the actual value of the utterances of the China Mail and Daily Press on what may be accurately enough described as the leading question of the present Government.
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