51
that the requirements of the Government upon landowners to comply with the sanitary measures recently initialed will result in still higher rents, from which your petitioners have no means of escaping.
As things are at present, the percentage of income paid away in house rent alone in Hong Kong, for dwellings of the sort occupied by your petitioners, is in great disparity with what on political economy would be considered a fair average percentage.
7. Whilst increased cost of living has been pressing very hardly upon your petitioners, their position in respect of their pay has received no corresponding advancement. Furthermore, by the abolition and amalgamation of certain offices, and the re-distribution of duties as a consequence following upon the enquiry by the Retrenchment Committee, additional work has been thrown upon your petitioners, for which no compensation in any shape or form has been allowed.
10. Your petitioners hold that in framing the report on the expenditure of the Colony and in suggesting certain economies within the public service, the Commissioners, in 1894, could not foresee the present condition of things as regards the abnormal prices of commodities, and the high value of rents following upon sanitary legislation called into force by the visitations epidemic of disease which occurred subsequent to the date of the Retrenchment Committee's report.
11. Based upon the monthly average rate of exchange at which exchange compensation has been paid in the Colony since the date it was first paid, your petitioners believe that some...