Certain room to be left for markets, plus hawkers and attendant on for future contingencies the rapid growth of the City. 2. The Recommendation of the Sub-Committee accordingly required that steps should be taken to ascertain whether the Trustees of the Sailors' Home would be likely to raise any opposition to a reclamation in front of their premises that would reduce the latter from Mean High Water mark to that category of an Inland lot. If it were found the Trustees would resist the realization of the scheme it would no doubt have been expedient for the Sub-Committee to reconsider its proposal and taking into account this opposition to have considered the advisability of selecting some other site.
Also, as adjoining the reclamation proposed by the Sub-Committee there is a valuable pier and godown property owned by an influential Syndicate of European Merchants whose interest would have been jeopardized by the realization of the market, inasmuch as the salient angle of the reclamation would have silted up the whole of the frontage. The most fierce opposition was therefore to be expected from this quarter and it became necessary to see how opposing interests could be reconciled, or at all events to see whether the Pier and Godown Company would be induced to forego active opposition to the scheme.
4. In the interval of the Christmas and New Year's holidays, the undersigned, in his capacity not as Surveyor General but as Chairman of the Sub-Committee, therefore undertook to ascertain what would be the action that these two powerful neighbours would take in the event of the recommendations of the Sub-Committee being adopted by the full Government Board and submitted to its unanimous support.