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administrative arrangements are acutely felt in small rather than in great communities. Only an infinitesimal portion of the thirty-five millions constituting the population of the United Kingdom are brought into personal contact with the Chancellor of the Exchequer, while the majority of the two or three hundred adult English Civilians residing at Hongkong are brought into frequent contact with the Colonial Treasurer. Again, it will be remembered that attention has sometimes been called by the Colonial Department in London to certain small alleged financial irregularities at Hong Kong. The marvel, in the opinion of all persons on the spot, is that, under the system prescribed and approved by that Department, there should have been any financial regularity at all.
The natural and proper course to have been pursued would, in the opinion of the most competent judges, have been, not to make the
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