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ad • passed by the Legislative Council on the 14th instant with the usual ver Encl: 2 174 Deer. 1896. tificate by the Attorney General and six copies of the Estimates Encl: I of Revenue and Expenditure.
I enclose also for your information a copy of my address to the Council on the 3rd instant which deals with the financial position of the Colony in some detail.
The statements however contained in my address respecting the probable Revenue and Expenditure for the current year require, I regret to say, to be modified as the expenditure during the latter part of the year has, I fear, exceeded what was anticipated when the revised estimate, upon which those statements were based, was calculated. I fear the probable total expenditure for the year chargeable to general revenue cannot be reckoned at a smaller figure than $2,540,000