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HONG KONG LEGISLATIVE COUNCIL.
the increases necessitated by the addition to the staff of the Medical and Police Departments, we have the feeling that expenditure has been increasing at a rate not altogether commensurate with the increase in the work of administration.
If expenditure continued at the present rate, the Government would very soon have to resort to additional taxation which, to re- peat the words of the unofficial members uttered through me last year, is a contingency "which the Colony is not in a position to stand without the most serious effects on its trade-effects which would have immediate reaction on the public finances as well as on the general prosperity of the Colony."
In making these remarks I desire to offer an explanation of my own position. It may be asked why, while on the one hand, as a member of the Salaries Commission, I have made recommenda- tions for an increase of salaries, etc., which would amount to about $1,300,000 a year, I am, on the other hand, unfavourably com- menting on the Government expenditure. My position would be clear, if a little thought were given to it. I maintain that it is one thing to pay an employee well, whether he is serving the Govern- ment or a private concern, and quite another to increase the personnel when it may not be justified by the volume of work performed.
Having discharged our duty as representatives of the largest section of the tax-payers, I have pleasure in tendering to the Govern- ment the thanks of the Chinese community for the sympathy, energy and promptitude with which it adopted measures to deal with the recent water situation.
We are under a special debt of gratitude to your Excellency for the very ready manner in which you met the appeals of the community, and for the solicitous regard you evinced for the suffer- ings of the poor in those trying days. The public is no less grateful to you, Sir, for the statesmanlike and marvellously successful way in which you have preserved the friendly relations with our great neighbour, notwithstanding the change of administration that has recently taken place in Canton. Your Excellency has, indeed, passed through another year of extremely arduous work and great anxiety. and I know that I am voicing the sentiments of all sections of the community when I express the wish that the short holiday which your Excellency is about to take may give you renewed health and reinforced vigour. (Applause).
HON. MR. W. E. L. SHENTON. Your Excellency, I have listened with great interest to the Honourable Colonial Secretary's review of the Colony's finances. Hong Kong, the great Emporium of the Far East, has, as it were, completed its annual stock-taking, and is nowv able to take a review of the past, consider its present financial position and enter into arrangements for its future.
A surplus of $7,712,265 assets over liabilities is, on the face of it, a most satisfactory position, and one with which any Board of