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9. On the other hand Hong Kong has always been (certainly for the last seven years) the military point d'appui whence troops have been sent to various parts of Chinese territory for the protection of Imperial interests. Our military force furnished a garrison for the Macao Fort in the Canton River when taken by Sir Michael Seymour in 1856; it supplied the principal part of the land force at the capture of Canton in the end of 1857; it was the feeder of the garrison in occupation there till the evacuation of Canton in 1861. In 1860-1 the Peking expedition was organized here ever since that time the colony has been used as the military head-quarters from which the detachments at Shanghai, Tientsin, &c., have been stored and recruited.
10. From recent advices I may include Japan as a future service under this head.
11. All these services were strictly Imperial and had no local object or result.
12. It would appear then that so far as the use of the troops is concerned there is little claim on the colony for their support.
13. Their intended transfer to Kowloon (see Secretary of State's despatch No. 94, of 18th July 1863) is to a certain extent proof of their not being urgently required in Hong Kong.
14. These remarks regard the use of the troops as an internal security to the island, but as concerns protection from an external enemy, the principal source of danger, we have it laid down by Lord Stanley at the foundation of the colony (November 1843) that this is dependent mainly on our naval superiority, while the Committee on Colonial Military Defences have said that so far as assistance from the Mother Country is concerned the chief thing which most of our colonies must look to for defence against foreign enemies is our Navy."
15. Moreover, Hong Kong being the only British territory on the coast of China, and the presence of a naval squadron here being a permanent and not a temporary necessity, as is the case with the military, one-half of whom are at this moment engaged on foreign soil, it follows that Hong Kong must be the head-quarters of the Navy in the China seas, and hence a closer connection must exist between the colony and the Navy than between the colony and the Army.
16. My inference from this is that if a claim on colonial funds be advanced it should be made on account of the naval squadron rather than the military garrison.
17. In support of this view I may mention that when it became necessary in June last to look to the defences of the colony it was to the Admiral and not to the General that I applied, and the only branch of the military service which it was proposed to employ was the Artillery to man the batteries, suggested and selected by the Commanding Royal Engineer, of which I shall say more presently.
18. But putting aside the use of the troops, or rather granting that they are here for local purposes or that they will be in future made more use of locally (in which case I presume the same control over them would be given to the Governor as is given in Ceylon) it yet forms a question in view of the two facts-
(1.) That the colony was founded in furtherance of an Imperial purpose and its garrison is maintained for "general national objects" [Mr. Elliot's memorandum].
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