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4.
Your petitioners have learnt the decision
of the Government with very great disappointment, but
confidently hope that, with the light of further inform-
ation which they are able to furnish in respect of their
real hardship, you may be pleased to modify the decision
of His Excellency the Officer Administering the govern-
ment.
5.
It was known to your petitioners at the time
they formulated their request alluded to in the second
par graph of this petition, that the Chinese section of
the Hongkong Government Service had also asked for an
increase of pay, alleging as their principal reason, the
increased cost of living in Hongkong.
6.
It was also known to your petitioners that
the request of the Chinese was favourably entertained, and
a promise given to them that an increase to their salaries
might be shortly expected.
7.
Your petitioners learnt with much pleasure
that the request of the Chinese would be granted, and
urge that in their own case there cannot possibly be any
reason for a different decision being made against
themselves.
8.
Your petitioners beg to impress upon you
the fact that the question of a higher cost of living,
&c,
has a more intensified application to them than
to the Chinese, from the fact that there are so many and
varied inherent differences between them and which are so
well known to you that your petitioners need not recapitu-
late them.
9.
The Chinese possess the unique advantage of
being entirely independent of European dress fabric and
provisions. They have their own home-made materials
which are readily procurable locally at prices unaffected
Their articles of food and
by difference of exchange.
other daily needs of life stand quite apart from those
of people (like your petitioners) brought up in and
habituated to European modes of living.
10.
In most cases the Chinese have a domicili-
ary residence in China, while your petitioners must
necessarily reside, with their families, in the Colony,
and have their children educated here.
II.
Residence in Hongkong admittedly costs a
great deal more as the demand for dwelling houses
increases, and such demand is still increasing, to an
extent that a further increase or rents is taking plac0
almost monthly.
12.
Your petitioners are reluctant to draw a
comparison between the Chinese and themselves at such
length, but they feel it necessary to do so because they
fail to see in what way they are placed at a greater
advantage than the Chinese in respect of salaries in the
service of the Government, seeing that the Chinese are
not under any disability to attain to all positions,
with the salaries attached, which are also open to your
petitioners. To quote the words of the regulations of
the Lords of the Treasury transmitted in Earl Granville's despatch in 1869, all "appointments in the Civil Service,
at the very outset, are now made the reward of merit.
Promotion by merit is the established rule in the
Service". In practice this system ohtains in Hongkong,
13.
at any rate, in respect of that branch of the fivil Service to which your petitioners and the Chinese belong.
In short, your petitioners would like to
say that, if just cause has been found for a promise for
an increase in the salaries of the Chinese members of
the
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