Public Works votes. The estimated expenditure on "Public Works, annually recurrent" during 1902 is $316,600. That on Public Works extraordinary is $797,300. Both these totals are automatic increases to the estimate for the current year; which in their turn were considerably in excess of the preceding year, the total excess amounting to $331,000.
11. I assumed, therefore, in my telegram referred to above, that Your Lordship would find it necessary to cut down the estimated expenditure. The actual expenditure of preceding years would effect this.
10. I note, moreover, that if the first seventeen items under Public Works Extraordinary are not new works which have appeared before the Colonial Estimates, no less than eight of them (not including the New Kowloon Waterworks Extension Scheme to which I have referred already) have increased since last year, the total excess amounting to $331,000.
12. In this connexion I have to inform you that I have carefully considered your despatch No. 453 of...