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(2.) That the Imperial trade for the encouragement of which it was founded, is so important financially to the Mother Country that one item alone (the tea duties) furnishes, or did recently furnish a tithe of the whole Imperial revenue-whether the local resources of this colony should be impounded to the certain hindrance of its advancement and success.
19. Before proceeding to the second point, I would remark on the argu- ment used that Hong Kong has cost the Mother Country 273,000l. during the first 14 years of its existence. If the Mother Country wanted an establishment like Hong Kong (and, by establishing it, it is proved that she did want it), she could only get it by paying for it, or by making others pay for it; and this last she did. Up to the end of 1846 the (necessarily nominal) Parliamentary grants were really stopped out of the Indemnity Fund extracted from the Chinese Government under the Nankin Treaty. Though nominally voted by Parlia- ment, no portion of it came out of the pocket of the taxpayer of the British Isles; and in the years that intervened from 1846 to the date of the cessation of the Parliamentary grant the sums voted were insignificant compared with the enormous revenue derived by Great Britain and India from the China trade, for the encouragement of which, as I have said before, the colony of Hong Kong was established.
20. Earl Grey, when Secretary of State for the Colonies (despatch No. 94, of 3rd February 1849), distinctly absolved the colony from all responsibility for the sums expended on it previously to the 1st April 1848, and since then the sums granted have amounted only to 130,9001., or less than half of what is now brought up against it.
21. Let us now turn to the second principal question which I have proposed. Is this military contribution warranted by the financial condition of the colony?
22. Our estimated surplus at the present moment is a little over 440,000 dollars, while the Surveyor-General has handed me the enclosed memorandum of the works in progress and under contemplation. It will be seen that they, amounting to 482,371 dollars, more than absorb the entire surplus, and still have no reference to Kowloon, necessary extension of roads, drains, repairs, &c., on each and all of which the expenditure will be considerable.
23. But it may be said this is the existent surplus, and as it has grown it doubtless will grow. I enclose, in correction of such a notion, a return showing the premium on land sold during the last ten years, and this, it must be borne in mind, is the main source of the surplus. It will be seen that the large amount in hand is the produce of premium during the three years 1860, 1861, and 1862, while during the current year 1863 so completely has this source of revenue been exhausted that the following result is shown:-
1860
1861
1862
1863
Dollars.
94,342
167,536
142,602
6,490
24. I should add that the estimate for 1853 from the premium on land was 72,000 dollars, and I presume that this high figure was calculated with reference to Kowloon, no intelligence of the settlement of which has reached the colony up to this date; but, however this may be, the fact is evident that less than an eleventh of the estimate for the year has been realized, and that premium on land will not henceforward be so profitable a source of revenue as it has been.
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