than in of the service now consequent upon the transfer of Officers from Departments with which they are familiar would be avoided, But this inconvenience is in some respects less considerable at Hong Kong, where all the chief civil Officers are assembled within a small area, beyond or the Straits Settlements, where some of those who might share in the temporary advancement might be in distant provinces, and in any case it has been held that it is better to incur such inconvenience occasionally than to
423 DRAFT. to give the control of Civil Administration to a Military Officer who is necessarily unacquainted with the manifold duties of a Governor, whose previous training has not been diverted to fit him for the discharge of civil functions. I need only add that this is not the first time that this question has been raised; it has repeatedly engaged the attention of my predecessors, more especially on three occasions, namely in 1864, in 1866 and 1871, and the decision arrived at, after much consideration, was that