Enclosure No. 2.
A
Members of the
H.E. THE GOVERNOR said-Honourable Legislative Council,-When framing the Colony's budget for a future year, it is always wise to look back over the past, in order to estimate the stability of our financial position, to measure the rate of colonial progress and development, and thereby to get an insight (if possible) into what the coming years have in store for us. Such retrospect is valuable even in normal times; but, when times are abnormal, when the Colony has been subjected to special storm and strain, when China-of which Hong Kong is geographically speaking a part-has been swept by Bolshevism and devastated by civil war, and when an end of the chaos and anarchy now unhappily prevalent in the Eighteen Provinces is not yet in sight, retrospect becomes essential and must be carried further into the past than usual. On this occasion, therefore, as a preface to the introduction of next year's budget by the Colonial Secretary, I propose briefly to review the Colony's financial history for the past thirty years, from 1897 to 1926, both years included.
Chronologists reckon thirty years to be a generation, and the thirty years in question do in fact coincide with the service in Hong Kong of several official members now seated at this Council table. They coincide very nearly with the period of my own experience of Hong Kong and there are also unofficial members of this Council who have had personal knowledge of Hong Kong throughout these years. I have, however, chosen this period mainly for three other reasons, the first being that it is practically co-extensive with the time during which the New Territories have formed part of the Colony, the second being that 1900 was the Boxer year and that useful lessons may be drawn from a comparison of conditions in the Colony then and now, and the third being that at the commencement of this period our 1893 loan had been fully expended and that since then the Colony's development has been financed almost entirely from annual revenue.
Thirty years ago, on the 1st January, 1897, the Colony's surplus balances amounted to $548,964. The revenue of the Colony collected during 1897 was $2,686,914 and the expenditure was $2,641,409. The total civil population of the Colony in that year was estimated to be 243,565 souls; the total shipping engaged in foreign trade entered and cleared at Hong Kong, excluding junks, was 12;124,599 tons and of this total 67 per cent. was British. It is interesting to place in immediate juxta-position the figures for last year. On the 1st January, 1926, the Colony's surplus balances amounted to $8,113,482. The revenue collected during 1926 was $21,131,581 and the expenditure was $23,524,715. The total civil population of the Colony was estimated to be 874,420 souls; the total shipping engaged in foreign trade entered and cleared at Hong Kong, excluding junks was 26,983,190 tons and of this total 54 per cent. was British. Therefore, during these thirty years the Colony's revenue increased more than eight-fold, its population was more than trebled, and its shipping engaged in foreign trade, exclusive of junks, was more than doubled.
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