C.O.
42100
607
RECO REGE 19 NOV 03
&
a military officer, however competent in his own work, to take over the civil administration of a colony. On general principles it has always appeared to me—and in this opinion I have the support of almost every colonial official with whom I have discussed the matter—that the proper officer to administer the government in the absence of the Governor is the Colonial Secretary, and that, in cases when there are special reasons why the Colonial Secretary should not be allowed to act, the duty should devolve on the Chief Justice. The training of a soldier almost always unfits him for the duties of a civil administrator; and in Hong-kong, where a number of vexed questions exist between the military and civil authorities, it seems ill-advised to combine the highest military authority and the highest civil authority in the person of one official.
During the three months immediately following my arrival in the colony, three different gentlemen occupied the post of Colonial Secretary, and three different gentlemen acted as Registrar General. The reports of the Finance Committee for 1901 show that the attendance included an Acting Attorney-General, an Acting Colonial Treasurer, and an Acting Director of Public Works. The service of the colony has suffered greatly from the evil of acting appointments, and a system should be introduced under which it would not be necessary to transfer so many officials from one department to another whenever a senior official goes on leave.
Owing to the fact that there has been no official of Hong-kong specially charged with the preservation of the colonial records or with the collection of a suitable library for the Colonial Secretary's office and for the Council Chamber, there is not collected in any one place a complete set of the printed records of the colony and although the Council Chamber library contained a history of Dalmatia and Montenegro and a volume of Greek verses of Shrewsbury School, I found it unprovided with a set of the colony's Official Gazette or with the administration reports of the other Crown colonies. The system of indexing the official correspondence of the colony is one of utter confusion. There appears to be no recognized set of finely sub-divided subject-headings under which documents could be classified with some approach to uniformity, and the result is that a great deal of time is wasted in searching for documents to which reference becomes necessary from time to time.
Notwithstanding the serious nature of such a visitation, it was not until 1901 that the Government took the matter thoroughly in hand by calling for a report on the subject from Professor W. J. Simpson, and a public health and buildings ordinance was drafted as the outcome of Professor Simpson's report and of the advice of Mr. Osbert Chadwick, C.M.G., and of Dr. Marcus Clark, medical officer of health, some eight years after the first outbreak of plague.
The other instance to which I refer is the water supply of the colony. About 20 years ago Mr. Osbert Chadwick, C.M.G., was called upon to make a report on the water supply of Hong-kong. He supplied the Government with a number of suggestions, which were only carried out in part. During the early part of 1901 the colony was threatened with an absolute loss of its water supply. So grave had the situation become in the colony in April that the water was only turned on for half an hour daily, and water had to be brought over from Kowloon in boats. The suffering produced by a water famine in a tropical country can scarcely be imagined by anyone who has not witnessed it, and it is one of the first duties of the Government to protect the people against such an occurrence. After an interval of 20 years, Mr. Chadwick had to be again called to the colony to report once more on the water supply.
Two circumstances have contributed very largely to the unsatisfactory condition of the clerical work of the colonial Government, one the inadequate size of the Government offices, and the other the employment of a large number of junior clerks, Chinese and Portuguese, at salaries little better than those paid to day labourers.
After visiting every colony of importance in the British Empire, except those situated in Africa, I can safely say that the Hongkong Post Office and Supreme Court are housed in the most wretched buildings ever dignified with the name of a Government office, and that the Colonial Secretary's department, the Public Works, and the Registrar-General's office are little better off. The Governor, happily for himself, has one of the best Government houses to be found among the smaller colonies, and, in addition, a charming summer residence at the Peak. It should be a source of satisfaction to the people of Hong-kong that at last the Colonial Office has consented to the erection of a number of new Government offices.
The matter of the junior clerks in the service is one which will have to be faced if the service is to be improved; and there appears to be but one satisfactory solution, and that is the increased employment of cadets. The service is a cadet service, a system which has worked admirably in the Straits Settlements. It is an expensive way