$10,000 is paid each year out of the Treasury of the Colony. The sum required to meet the allowance if granted to your petitioners would represent $11,000 or thereabouts yearly, or rather less than 14 per cent of the total amount now paid to the officers enjoying the privilege, and not so per cent of the total revenue of the Colony. The sum of $11,000 apportioned to your petitioners would mean only some $19 more cash, on average, to their monthly salaries.
It is not necessary for your petitioners to call to mind the justice and fairness with which the Government of Her Majesty's Colony has at all times been administered, irrespective of class or creed. Suffice it to say that they appeal, through you, to the traditions of a high and liberal government such as that which has distinguished the period of Her Majesty's long glorious reign, on the eve of whose celebration we are about to enter, to accord to them that which, if granted them, would be perfectly consonant with the high sense of justice that has so successfully and so beneficently guided the Rule which so justly and so prominently prevails not only among the great Nations of the civilised world, but of the natives of India, Australasia, and China.
And, as in duty bound, your petitioners will ever pray,
The 26th day of May, 1897.